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THE 
LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 



BY 



FREDERIC LOGAN PAXSON 

JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



ILLUSTRATED 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1910 

All rights reserved 






COPTBIGHT, 1910, 

bt the macmillan company. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. 



Norioooti ^rrs0 

J. S, Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©Gi.i-2; 



) V r i -> 



PREFACE 

I HAVE told here the story of the last frontier 
within the United States, trying at once to preserve 
the picturesque atmosphere which has given to the 
^'Far West'^ a definite and well-understood mean- 
ing, and to indicate those forces which have shaped 
the history of the country beyond the Mississippi. 
In doing it I have had to rely largely upon my own 
investigations among sources little used and rela- 
tively inaccessible. The exact citations of authority, 
with which I might have crowded my pages, would 
have been out of place in a book not primarily in- 
tended for the use of scholars. But I hope, before 
many years, to exploit in a larger and more elabo- 
rate form the mass of detailed information upon 
which this sketch is based. 

My greatest debts are to the owners of the origi- 
nals from which the illustrations for this book have 
been made; to Claude H. Van Tyne, who has re- 
peatedly aided me with his friendly criticism; and 
to my wife, whose careful readings have saved me 
from many blunders in my text. 

FREDEEIC L. PAXSON. 
Ann Arbor, August 7, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Westward Movement . . . . . . 1 

CHAPTER II 
The Indian Frontier 14 

CHAPTER III 
Iowa and the New Northwest 33 

CHAPTER IV 
The Santa Fe Trail 53 

CHAPTER V 
The Oregon Trail 70 

CHAPTER VI 
Overland with the Mormons 86 

CHAPTER VII 
California and the Forty-niners 104 

CHAPTER VIII 
Kansas and the Indian Frontier 119 

CHAPTER IX 

"Pike's Peak or Bust!" 138 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER X 

PACK 

From Arizona to Montana 156 

CHAPTER XI 
The Overland Mail 174 

CHAPTER XII 
The Engineers' Frontier 192 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Union Pacific Railroad 211 

CHAPTER XIV 
The Plains in the Civil War 225 

CHAPTER XV 
The Cheyenne War 243 

CHAPTER XVI 
The Sioux War 264 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Peace Commission and the Open Way . . . 284 

CHAPTER XVin 
Black Kettle's Last Raid 304 

CHAPTER XIX 
The First of the Railways 324 

CHAPTER XX 
The New Indian Policy 340 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER XXI 

PAGE 

The Last Stand: Chief Joseph and Sitting Bull . 358 

CHAPTER XXII 
Letting in the Population . . . . . . 372 

CHAPTER XXin 
Bibliographical Note 387 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Prairie Schooner Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Map: Indian Country and Agricultural Frontier, 

1840-1841 22 

Chief Keokuk facing 30 

Iowa Sod Plow. (From a Cut belonging to the Historical 

Department of Iowa.) 46 

Map: Overland Trails 57 

Fort Laramie, 1842 facing 78 

Map: The West in 1849 120 

Map: The West in 1854 140 

"Ho FOR the Yellow Stone" .... facing 144 

The Mining Camp " 158 

Fort Snelling "204 

Red Cloud and Professor Marsh ... " 274 

Map: The West in 1863 300 

Position of Reno on the Little Big Horn . facing 360 

Map: The Pacific Railroads, 1884 380 



■'A^ 



zi 



THE LAST AMEEICAN FRONTIER 
CHAPTER I 

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 

The story of the United States is that of a series 
of frontiers which the hand of man has reclaimed 
from nature and the savage, and which courage and 
foresight have gradually transformed from desert 
waste to virile commonwealth. It is the story of 
one long struggle, fought over different lands and by 
different generations, yet ever repeating the condi- 
tions and episodes of the last period in the next. 
The winning of the first frontier established in 
America its first white settlements. Later struggles 
added the frontiers of the AUeghanies and the Ohio, 
of the Mississippi and the Missouri. The winning 
of the last frontier completed the conquest of the 
continent. 

The greatest of American problems has been the 
problem of the West. For four centuries after the 
discovery there existed here vast areas of fertile 
lands which beckoned to the colonist and invited 
him to migration. On the boundary between the 
settlements and the wilderness stretched an indefinite 
line that advanced westward from year to year. 



2 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Hardy pioneers were ever to be found ahead of it, 
blazing the trails and clearing in the valleys. Tjie 
advance line of the farmsteads was never far behind 
it. And out of this shifting frontier between man 
and nature have come the problems that have occu- 
pied and directed American governments since their 
beginning, as well as the men who have solved them. 
The portion of the population residing in the frontier 
has always been insignificant in number, yet it has 
well-nigh controlled the nation. The dominant prob- 
lems in politics and morals, in economic develop- 
ment and social organization, have in most instances 
originated near the frontier or been precipitated by 
some shifting of the frontier interest. 

The controlling influence of the frontier in shaping 
American problems has been possible because of the 
construction of civilized governments in a new area, 
unhampered by institutions of the past or conserva- 
tive prejudices of the present. Each common- 
wealth has built from the foundation. An institu- 
tion, to exist, has had to justify itself again and again. 
No force of tradition has kept the outlawed fact 
alive. The settled lands behind have in each genera- 
tion been forced to remodel their older selves upon 
the newer growths beyond. 

Individuals as well as problems have emerged 
from the line of the frontier as it has advanced across 
a continent. In the conflict with the wilderness, 
birth, education, wealth, and social standing have 
counted for little in comparison with strength, vigor, 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 3 

and aggressive courage. The life there has always 
been hard, killing off the weaklings or driving them 
back to the settlements, and leaving as a result a 
picked population not noteworthy for its culture or 
its refinements, but eminent in qualities of positive 
force for good or bad. The bad man has been quite 
as typical of the frontier as the hero, but both have 
possessed its dominant virtues of self-confidence, 
vigor, and initiative. Thus it has been that the 
men of the frontiers have exerted an influence upon 
national affairs far out of proportion to their strength 
in numbers. 

The influence of the frontier has been the strongest 
single factor in American history, exerting its power 
from the first days of the earliest settlements down 
to the last years of the nineteenth century, when the 
frontier left the map. No other force has been con- 
tinuous in its influence throughout four ceuturies. 
Men still live whose characters have developed under 
its pressure. The colonists of New England were 
not too early for its shaping. 

The earliest American frontier was in fact a 
European frontier, separated by an ocean from the 
life at home and meeting a wilderness in every exten- 
sion. English commercial interests, stimulated by 
the successes of Spain and Portugal, began the or- 
ganization of corporations and the planting of trad- 
ing depots before the sixteenth century ended. The 
accident that the Atlantic seaboard had no exploit- 
able products at once made the American commercial 



4 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

trading company of little profit and translated its 
depots into resident colonies. The first instalments 
of colonists had little intention to turn pioneer, but 
when religious and political quarrels in the mother 
country made merry England a melancholy place 
for Puritans, a motive was born which produced a 
generation of voluntary frontiersmen. Their scat- 
tered outposts made a line of contact between Eng- 
land and the American wilderness which by 1700 
extended along the Atlantic from Maine to Carolina. 
Until the middle of the eighteenth century the 
frontier kept within striking distance of the sea. 
Its course of advance was then, as always, deter- 
mined by nature and geographic fact. Pioneers 
followed the line of least resistance. The river 
valley was the natural communicating link, since 
along its waters the vessel could be advanced, while 
along its banks rough trails could most easil}^ de- 
velop into highways. The extent and distribution 
of this colonial frontier was determined by the 
contour of the seaboard along which it lay. 

Running into the sea, with courses nearly parallel, 
the Atlantic rivers kept the colonies separated. 
Each colony met its own problems in its own way. 
England was quite as accessible as some of the 
neighboring colonies. No natural routes invited 
communication among the settlements, and an 
English policy deliberately discouraged attempts 
on the part of man to bring the colonies together. 
Hence it was that the various settlements developed 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 5 

as island frontiers, touching the river mouths, not 
advancing much along the shore line, but penetrat- 
ing into the country as far as the rivers themselves 
offered easy access. 

For varying distances, all the important rivers 
of the seaboard are navigable ; but all are broken by 
falls at the points where they emerge upon the level 
plains of the coast from the hilly courses of the foot- 
hills of the Appalachians. Connecting these various 
waterfalls a line can be drawn roughly parallel to 
the coast and marking at once the western limit of 
the earliest colonies and the line of the second 
frontier. The first frontier was the seacoast itself. 
The second was reached at the falls line shortly 
after 1700. 

Within these island colonies of the first frontier 
American life began. English institutions were 
transplanted in the new soil and shaped in growth 
by the quality of their nourishment. They came 
to meet the needs of their dependent populations, 
but they ceased to be English in the process. The 
facts of similarity among the institutions of Massa- 
chusetts and Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or Georgia, 
point clearly to the similar stocks of ideas imported 
with the colonists, and the similar problems attend- 
ing upon the winning of the first frontier. Already, 
before the next frontier at the falls line had been 
reached, the older settlements had begun to develop 
a spirit of conservatism plainly different from the 
attitude of the old frontier. 



6 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The falls line was passed long before the colonial 
period came to an end, and pioneers were working 
their way from clearing to clearing, up into the 
mountains, by the early eighteenth century. As 
they approached the summit of the eastern divide, 
leaving the falls behind, the essential isolation of 
the provinces began to weaken under the combined 
forces of geographic influence and common need. 
The valley routes of communication which de- 
termined the lines of advance run parallel, across 
the first frontier, but have a tendency to converge 
among the mountains and to stand on common 
ground at the summit. Every reader of Francis 
Parkman knows how in the years from 1745 to 1756 
the pioneers of the more aggressive colonies crossed 
the Alleghanies and meeting on the summit found 
that there they must make common cause against the 
French, or recede. The gateways of the West con- 
verge where the headwaters of the Tennessee and 
Cumberland and Ohio approach the Potomac and 
its neighbors. There the colonists first came to 
have common associations and common problems. 
Thus it was that the years in which the frontier 
line reached the forks of the Ohio were filled with 
talk of colonial union along the seaboard. The 
frontier problem was already influencing the life of 
the East and impelling a closer union than had been 
known before. 

The line of the frontier was generally parallel to 
the coast in 1700. By 1800 it had assumed the 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 7 

form of a wedge, with its apex advancing down the V 
rivers of the Mississippi Valley and its sides sloping /\ 
backward to north and south. The French war of 
1756-1763 saw the apex at the forks of the Ohio. 
In the seventies it started down the Cumberland as 
pioneers filled up the valleys of eastern Kentucky 
and Tennessee. North and south the advance was "^ 
slower. No other river valleys could aid as did the 
Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee, and population 
must always follow the line of least resistance. On 
both sides of the main advance, powerful Indian 
confederacies contested the ground, opposing the 
entry of the whites. The centres of Indian strength 
were along the Lakes and north of the Gulf. Inter- 
mediate was the strip of '^dark and bloody ground," 
fought over and hunted over by all, but occupied by 
none; and inviting white approach through the three 
valleys that opened it to the Atlantic. 

The war for independence occurred just as the 
extreme frontier started down the western rivers. 
Campaigns inspired by the West and directed by 
its leaders saw to it that when the independence was 
achieved the boundary of the United States should 
not be where England had placed it in 1763, on the V 
summit of the AUeghanies, but at the Mississippi 
itself, at which the lines of settlement were shortly 
to arrive. The new nation felt the influence of this 
frontier in the very negotiations which made it free. 
The development of its pplicies and its parties felt 
the frontier pressure from the start. 



8 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Steadily after 1789 the wedge-shaped frontier 
advanced. New states appeared in Kentucky and 
Tennessee as concrete evidences of its advance, while 
before the century ended, the campaign of Mad 
Anthony Wayne at the Fallen Timbers had allowed 
the northern flank of the wedge to cross Ohio and 
include Detroit. At the turn of the century Ohio 
entered the Union in 1803, filled with a population 
tempted to meet the trying experiences of the frontier 
by the call of lands easier to till than those in New 
England, from which it came. The old eastern com- 
munities still retained the traditions of colonial isola- 
tion ; but across the mountains there was none of this. 
Here state lines were artificial and convenient, not 
representing facts of barrier or interest. The emi- 
grants from varying sources passed over single routes, 
through single gateways, into a valley which knew 
little of itself as state but was deeply impressed with 
its national bearings. A second war with England 
gave voice to this newer nationality of the newer 
states. 

The war with England in its immediate conse- 
quences was a bad investment. It ended with the 
government nearly bankrupt, its military reputation 
redeemed only by a victory fought after the peace 
was signed, its naval strength crushed after heroic 
resistance. The eastern population, whose war had 
been forced upon it by the West, was bankrupt too. 
And by 1814 began the Hegira. For five years the 
immediate result of the struggle was a suffering 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 9 

East. A new state for every year was the western 
accompaniment. 

The westward movement has been continuous in 
America since the beginning. Bad roads, dense 
forests, and Indian obstructers have never suc- 
ceeded in stifling the call of the West. A steady 
procession of pioneers has marched up the slopes 
of the Appalachians, across the trails of the summits, 
and down the various approaches to the Mississippi 
Valley. When times have been hard in the East, 
the stream has swollen to flood proportions. In 
the five years which followed the English war the 
accelerated current moved more rapidly than ever 
before; while never since has its speed been equalled 
save in the years following similar catastrophes, as 
the panics of 1837 and 1857, or in the years under 
the direct inspiration of the gold fields. 

Five new states between 1815 and 1821 carried 
the area of settlement down the Ohio to the Missis- 
sippi, and even up the Missouri to its junction with 
the Kansas. The whole eastern side was filled with 
states, well populated along the rivers, but sparsely 
settled to north and south. The frontier wedge, 
noticeable by 1776, was even more apparent, now 
that the apex had crossed the Mississippi and as- 
cended the Missouri to its bend, while the wings 
dragged back, just including New Orleans at the 
south, and hardly touching Detroit at the north. 
The river valleys controlled the distribution of pop- 
ulation, and as yet it was easier and simpler to follow 



10 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the valleys farther west than to strike out across 
country for lands nearer home but lacking the con- 
venience of the natural route. 

For the pioneer advancing westward the route lay 
direct from the summit of the Alleghanies to the bend 
of the Missouri. The course of the Ohio facilitated his 
advance, while the Missouri River, for two hundred 
and fifty miles above its mouth, runs so nearly east 
and west as to afford a natural continuation of the 
route. But at the mouth of the Kansas the Mis- 
souri bends. Its course changes to north and south 
and it ceases to be a highway for the western trav- 
eller. Beyond the bend an overland journey must 
commence. The Platte and Kansas and Arkansas 
all continue the general direction, but none is easily 
navigable. The emigrant must leave the boat near 
the bend of the Missouri and proceed by foot or 
wagon if he desire to continue westward. With the 
admission of Missouri in 1821 the apex of the frontier 
had touched the great bend of the river, beyond 
which it could not advance with continued ease. 
Population followed still the line of easiest access, 
but now it was simpler to condense the settlements 
farther east, or to broaden out to north or south, 
than to go farther west. The flanks of the wedge 
began to move. The southwest cotton states re- 
ceived their influx of population. The country 
around the northern lakes began to fill up. The 
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made easier the 
advancing of the northern frontier line, with Michi- 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 11 

gan, Wisconsin, and even Iowa and Minnesota to 
be colonized. And while these flanks were filling 
out, the apex remained at the bend of the Missouri, 
whither it had arrived in 1821. 

There was more to hold the frontier line at the 
bend of the Missouri than the ending of the water 
route. In those very months when pioneers were 
clearing plots near the mouth of the Kaw, or Kansas, 
a major of the United States army was collecting / 
data upon which to build a tradition of a great 
American desert; while the Indian difficulty, stead- / 
ily increasing as the line of contact between the races 
grew longer, acted as a vigorous deterrent. 

Schoolboys of the thirties, forties, and fifties were 
told that from the bend of the Missouri to the Stony ^ 
Mountains stretched an American desert. The 
makers of their geography books drew the des- 
ert upon their maps, coloring its brown with the * 
speckled aspect that connotes Sahara or Arabia, with V 
camels, oases, and sand dunes. The legend was 
founded upon the fact that rainfall becomes more 
scanty as the slopes approach the Rockies, and upon 
the observation of Major Stephen H. Long, who 
traversed the country in 1819-1820. Long re- 
ported that it could never support an agricultural 
population. The standard weekly journal of the 
day thought of it as ^'covered with sand, gravel, 
pebbles, etc." A writer in the forties told of its 
''utter destitution of timber, the sterility of its 
sandy soil," and believed that at 'Hhis point the 



12 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Creator seems to have said to the tribes of emigra- 
tion that are annually rolling toward the west, 
'Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.'" Thus 
it came about that the frontier remained fixed for 
many years near the bend of the Missouri. Diffi- 
culty of route, danger from Indians, and a great 
and erroneous belief in the existence of a sandy 
desert, all served to barricade the way. The flanks 
advanced across the states of the old Northwest, and 
into Louisiana and Arkansas, but the western out- 
post remained for half a century at the point which 
it had reached in the days of Stephen Long and the 
admission of Missouri. 

By 1821 many frontiers had been created and 
crossed in the westward march; the seaboard, the 
falls line, the crest of the Alleghanies, the Ohio 
Valley, the Mississippi and the Missouri, had been 
passed in turn. Until this last frontier at the 
bend of the Missouri had been reached nothing had 

y ever checked the steady progress. But at this point 
the nature of the advance changed. The obstacles 
of the American desert and the Rockies refused to 

^ / yield to the '' heel-and-toe" methods which had been 
successful in the past. The slavery quarrel, the 
Mexican War, even the Civil War, came and passed 
with the area beyond this frontier scarcely changed. 
It had been crossed and recrossed; new centres of 
life had grown up beyond it on the Pacific coast; 
Texas had acquired an identity and a population; 
but the so-called desert with its doubtful soils, its 



THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 13 

lack of easy highways and its Indian inhabitants, 
threatened to become a constant quantity. 

From 1821 to 1885 extends, in one form or an-| 
other, the struggle for the last frontier. The im-' 
perative demands from the frontier are heard con- 
tinually throughout the period, its leaders in long 
succession are filling the high places in national 
affairs, but the problem remains in its same terri- 
torial location. Connected with its phases appear 
the questions of the middle of the century. The 
destiny of the Indian tribes is suggested by the long 
line of contact and the impossibility of maintaining 
a savage and a civilized life together and at once. 
A call from the farther West leads to more thorough 
exploration of the lands beyond the great frontier, 
bringing into existence the continental trails, pro- 
ducing problems of long-distance government, and 
intensifying the troubles of the Indians. The final 
struggle for the control of the desert and the elimi- 
nation of the frontier draws out the tracks of the 
Pacific railways, changes and reshapes the Indian 
policies again, and brings into existence, at the end 
of the period, the great West. But the struggle is 
one of half a century, repeating the events of all the 
earlier struggles, and ever more bitter as it is larger 
and more difficult. It summons the aid of the 
nation, as such, before it is concluded, but when it is 
ended the first era in American history has been 
closed. 



CHAPTER II 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 



A LENGTHENING frontier made more difficult the 
maintenance of friendly relations between the two 
races involved in the struggle for the continent. It 
increased the area of danger by its extension, while its 
advance inland pushed the Indian tribes away from 
their old home lands, concentrating their numbers 
along its margin and thereby aggravating their 
situation. Colonial negotiations for lands as they 
were needed had been relatively easy, since the 
Indians and whites were nearly enough equal in 
strength to have a mutual respect for their agree- 
ments and a fear of violation. But the white popu- 
lation doubled itself every twenty-five years, while 
the Indians close enough to resist were never more 
than 300,000, and have remained near that figure or 
under it until to-day. The stronger race could afford 
to indulge the contempt that its superior civilization 
engendered, while its individual members along the 
line of contact became less orderly and governable as 
the years advanced. An increasing willingness to 
override on the part of the white governments and an 
increasing personal hatred and contempt on the part 
of individual pioneers, account easily for the danger 

14 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 15 

to life along the frontier. The savage, at his best, 
was not responsive to the motives of civilization; at 
his worst, his injuries, real or imaginary, — and too 
often they were real, — made him the most dangerous 
of all the wild beasts that harassed the advancing 
frontier. The problem of his treatment vexed all the 
colonial governments and endured after the Revo- 
lution and the Constitution. It first approached a 
systematic policy in the years of Monroe and Adams 
and Jackson, but never attained form and shape 
until the ideal which it represented had been out- 
lawed by the march of civilization into the West. 
The conflict between the Indian tribes and the 
whites could not have ended in any other way than 
that which has come to pass. A handful of savages, 
knowing little of agriculture or manufacture or 
trade among themselves, having no conception of 
private ownership of land, possessing social ideals 
and standards of life based upon the chase, could 
not and should not have remained unaltered at the 
expense of a higher form of life. The farmer must 
always have right of way against the hunter, and 
the trader against the pilferer, and law against self- 
help and private war. In the end, by whatever 
route, the Indian must have given up his hunting 
grounds and contented himself with progress into 
civilized life. The route was not one which he 
could ever have determined for himself. The 
stronger race had to determine it for him. Under 
ideal conditions it might have been determined 



16 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

without loss of life and health, without promoting 
a bitter race hostility that invited extinction for the 
inferior race, without prostituting national honor 
or corrupting individual moral standards. The 
Indians needed maintenance, education, discipline, 
and guardianship until the older ones should have 
died and the younger accepted the new order, and 
all these might conceivably have been provided. 
But democratic government has never developed a 
powerful and centralized authority competent to 
administer a task such as this, with its incidents of 
checking trade, punishing citizens, and maintaining 
rigorously a standard of conduct not acceptable to 
those upon whom it is to be enforced. 

The acts by which the United States formulated 
and carried out its responsibilities towards the 
Indian tribes were far from the ideal. In theory 
the disposition of the government was generally 
benevolent, but the scheme was badly conceived, 
while human frailty among officers of the law and 
citizens as well rendered execution short of such ideal 
as there was. 

For thirty years the government under the Con- 
stitution had no Indian policy. In these years it 
acquired the habit of dealing with the tribes as 
independent — ''domestic dependent nations," Jus- 
tice Marshall later called them — by means of 
formal treaties. Europe thought of chiefs as kings 
and tribes as nations. The practice of making 
treaties was based on this delusion. After a century 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 17 

of practice it was finally learned that nomadic 
savages have no idea of sovereign government or 
legal obligation, and that the assumption of the ex- 
istence of such knowledge can lead only to mis- 
conception and disappointment. 

As the frontier moved down the Ohio, individual 
wars were fought and individual treaties were made 
as occasion offered. At times the tribes yielded 
readily to white occupation; occasionally they 
struggled bitterly to save their lands; but the result 
was always the same. The right bank of the river, 
long known as the Indian Shore, was contested in a 
series of wars lasting nearly until 1800, and became 
available for white colonization only after John Jay 
had, through his treaty of 1794, removed the British 
encouragement to the Indians, and General Wayne 
had administered to them a decisive defeat. Iso- 
lated attacks were frequent, but Tecumseh's war 
of 1811 was the next serious conflict, while, after 
General Harrison brought this war to an end at 
Tippecanoe, there was comparative peace along the 
northwest frontier until the time of Black Hawk and 
his uprising of 1832. 

The left bank of the river was opened with less 
formal resistance, admitting Kentucky and Tennes- 
see before the Indian Shore was a safe habitation 
for whites. South of Tennessee lay the great south- 
ern confederacies, somewhat out of the line of early 
western progress, and hence not plunged into strug- 
gles until the War of 1812 was over. But as Wayne 



)( 



18 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

and Harrison had opened the Northwest, so Jackson 
cleared the way for white advance into Alabama 
and Mississippi. By 1821 new states touched the 
Mississippi River along its whole course between 
New Orleans and the lead mines of upper Illinois. 

In the advance of the frontier to the bend of the 
Missouri some of the tribes were pushed back, while 
others were passed and swallowed up by the invad- 
ing population. Experience showed that the two 
races could not well live in adjacent lands. The 
conditions which made for Indian welfare could not 
be kept up in the neighborhood of white settlements, 
for the more lawless of the whites were ever ready, 
through illicit trade, deceit, and worse, to provoke 
the most dangerous excesses of the savage. The 
Indian was demoralized, the white became steadily 
more intolerant. 

Although the ingenious Jefferson had anticipated 
him in the idea, the first positive policy which 
looked toward giving to the Indian a permanent 
home and the sort of guardianship which he needed 
until he could become reconciled to civilized life was 
the suggestion of President Monroe. At the end of 
his presidency, Georgia was angrily demanding the 
removal of the Cherokee from her limits, and was 
ready to violate law and the Constitution in her 
desire to accomplish her end. Monroe was pre- 
pared to meet the demand. He submitted to Con- 
gress, on January 27, 1825, a report from Calhoun, 
then Secretary of War, upon the numbers of the 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 19 

tribes, the area of their lands, and the area of 
available destinations for them. He recommended 
that as rapidly as agreements could be made with 
them they be removed to country lying westward 
and northwestward, — to the further limits of the 
Louisiana Purchase, which lay beyond the line of 
the western frontier. 

Already, when this message was sent to Congress, 
individual steps had been taken in the direction 
which it pointed out. A few tribes had agreed to 
cross the Mississippi, and had been allotted lands 
in Missouri and Arkansas. But Missouri, just ad- 
mitted, and Arkansas, now opening up, were no 
more hospitable to Indian wards than Georgia and 
Ohio had been. The Indian frontier must be at 
some point still farther west, towards the vast plains 
overrun by the Osage ^ and Kansa tribes, the Pawnee 
and the Sioux. There had been few dealings with 
the Indians beyond the Mississippi before Monroe 
advanced his policy. Lieutenant Pike had visited 
the head of the Mississippi in 1805 and had treated 
with the Sioux for a reserve at St. Paul. Subse- 
quent agreements farther south brought the Osage 
tribes within the treaty arrangements. The year 
1825 saw the notable treaties which prepared the 
way for peace among the western tribes, and the 
reception by these tribes of the eastern nations. 

^ My usage in spelling tribal names follows the list agreed upon 
by the bureaus of Indian Affairs and American Ethnology, and 
printed in C. J. Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, 57th 
Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 452, Serial 4253, p. 1021. 



20 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Five weeks after the special message Congress 
authorized a negotiation with the Kansa and Osage 
nations. These tribes roamed over a vast country 
f extending from the Platte River to the Red, and 
west as far as the lower slopes of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. Their limits had never been definitely stated, 
although the Osage had already surrendered claim 
to lands fronting on the Mississippi between the 
mouths of the Missouri and the Arkansas. Not 
only was it now desirable to limit them more closely 
in order to make room for Indian immigrants, but 
. these tribes had already begun to worry traders 
^ going overland to the Southwest. As soon as the 
frontier reached the bend of the Missouri, the profits 
of the Santa Fe trade had begun to tempt caravans 
up the Arkansas valley and across the plains. To 
preserve peace along the Santa Fe trail was now as 
important as to acquire grounds. Governor Clark 
negotiated the treaties at St. Louis. On June 2, 
1825, he persuaded the Osage chiefs to surrender all 
their lands except a strip fifty miles wide, beginning 
at White Hair's village on the Neosho, and running 
indefinitely west. The Kaw or Kansa tribe was a 
day later in its agreement, and reserved a thirty- 
mile strip running west along the Kansas River. The 
two treaties at once secured rights of transit and 
pledges of peace for traders to Santa Fe, and gave 
the United States title to ample lands west of the 
frontier on which to plant new Indian colonies. 
The autumn of 1825 witnessed at Prairie du Chien 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 21 

the first step towards peace and condensation along 
the northern frontier. The Erie Canal, not yet 
opened, had not begun to drain the population of 
the East into the Northwest, and Indians were in 
peaceful possession of the lake shores nearly to Fort 
Wayne. West of Lake Michigan were constant 
tribal wars. The Potawatomi, Menominee, and 
Chippewa, first, then Winnebago, and Sauk and 
Foxes, and finally the various bands of Sioux around 
the Mississippi and upper Missouri, enjoyed still 
their traditional hostility and the chase. Governor 
Clark again, and Lewis Cass, met the tribes at the 
old trading post on the Mississippi to persuade 
them to bury the tomahawk among themselves. 
The treaty, signed August 19, 1825, defined the 
boundaries of the different nations by lines of which 
the most important was between the Sioux and 
Sauk and Foxes, which was later to be known as the 
Neutral Line, across northern Iowa. The basis of 
this treaty of Prairie du Chien was temporary at 
best. Before it was much more than ratified the 
white influx began, Fort Dearborn at the head of 
Lake Michigan blossomed out into Chicago, and 
squatters penetrating to Rock Island in the Missis- 
sippi had provoked the war of 1832, in which Black 
Hawk made the last stand of the Indians in the old 
Northwest. In the thirties the policy of removal 
completed the opening of Illinois and Wisconsin to 
the whites. 

The policy of removal and colonization urged by 




Indian Country and Agricultural Frontier, 1840-1841 

Showing the solid line of reservation lands extending from the Red River /' 
to Green Bay, and the agricultural frontier of more than six inhabitants per 
equare mile. 

22 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 23 

Monroe and Calhoun was supported by Congress 
and succeeding Presidents, and carried out during the 
next fifteen years. It required two transactions, 
the acquisition by the United States of western titles, 
and the persuasion of eastern tribes to accept the 
hew lands thus available. It was based upon an 
assumption that the frontier had reached its final 
resting place. Beyond Missouri, which had been 
admitted in 1821, lay a narrow strip of good lands, 
merging soon into the American desert. Few sane 
Americans thought of converting this land into 
states as had been the process farther east. At the 
bend of the Missouri the frontier had arrived; there 
it was to stay, and along the lines of its receding 
flanks the Indians could be settled with pledges of 
permanent security and growth. Here they could 
never again impede the western movement in its 
creation of new communities and states. Here it 
would be possible, in the words of Lewis Cass, to 
*4eave their fate to the common God of the white 
man and the Indian." 

The five years following the treaty of Prairie du 
Chien were filled with active negotiation and mi- 
gration in the lands beyond the Missouri. First 
came the Shawnee to what was promised as a final 
residence. From Pennsylvania, into Ohio, and on 
into Missouri, this tribe had already been pushed 
by the advancing frontier. Now its ever shrinking 
lands were cut down to a strip with a twenty-five- 
mile frontageon the Missouri line and an extension 



24 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

west for one hundred and twenty-five miles along 
the south bank of the Kansas River and the south 
line of the Kaw reserve. Its old neighbors, the Del- 
awares, became its new neighbors in 1829, accepting 
the north bank of the Kansas, with a Missouri 
River frontage as far north as the new Fort Leaven- 
worth, and a ten-mile outlet to the buffalo country, 
along the northern line of the Kaw reserve. Later 
the Kickapoo and other minor tribes were colonized 
yet farther to the north. The chase was still to be 
the chief reliance of the Indian population. Un- 
limited supplies of game along the plains were to 
supply his larder, with only occasional aid from 
presents of other food supplies. In the long run 
agriculture was to be encouraged. Farmers and 
blacksmiths and teachers were to be provided in 
various ways, but until the longed-for civilization 
should arrive, the red man must hunt to live. The 
new Indian frontier was thus started by the coloni- 
zation of the Shawnee and Delawares just beyond 
the bend of the Missouri on the old possessions of 
the Kaw. 

The northern flank of the Indian frontier, as it 
came to be established, ran along the line of the 
frontier of white settlements, from the bend of the 
Missouri, northeasterly towards the upper lakes. 
Before the final line of the reservations could be 
determined the Erie Canal had begun to shape the 
Northwest. Its stream of population was filling the 
northern halves of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 25 

working up into Michigan and Wisconsin. Black 
Hawk's War marked the last struggle for the fertile 
plains of upper Illinois, and made possible an Indian 
line which should leave most of Wisconsin and part 
of Iowa open to the whites. 

Before Black Hawk's War occurred, the great 
peace treaty of Prairie du Chien had been followed, 
in 1830, by a second treaty at the same place, at 
which Governor Clark and Colonel Morgan re- 
enforced the guarantees of peace. The Omaha 
tribe now agreed to stay west of the Missouri, its 
neighbors being the Yankton Sioux above, and the 
Oto and Missouri below; a half-breed tract was 
reserved between the Great and Little Nemahas, 
while the neutral line across Iowa became a neutral 
strip forty miles wide from the Mississippi River to 
the Des Moines. Chronic warfare between the 
Sioux and Sauk and Foxes had threatened the ex- 
tinction of the latter as well as the peace of the 
frontier, so now each tribe surrendered twenty miles 
of its land along the neutral line. Had the latter 
tribes been willing to stay beyond the Mississippi, 
where they had agreed to remain, and where they 
had clear and recognized title to their lands, the war 
of 1832 might have been avoided. But they con- 
tinued to occupy a part of Illinois, and when squat- 
ters jumped their cornfields near Rock Island, the 
pacific counsels of old Keokuk were less acceptable 
than the warlike promises of the able brave Black 
Hawk. The resulting war, fought over the country 



26 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

between the Rock and Wisconsin rivers, threw the 
frontier into a state of panic out of all proportion to 
the danger threatening. Volunteers of Illinois and 
Michigan, and regulars from eastern posts under 
General Winfield Scott, produced a peace after a 
campaign of doubtful triumph. Near Fort Arm- 
strong, on Rock Island, a new territorial arrangement 
was agreed upon. As the price of their resistance, 
the Sauk and Foxes, who were already located 
west of the Mississippi, between Missouri and the 
Neutral Strip, surrendered to the United States a 
belt of land some forty miles wide along the west 
bank of the Mississippi, thus putting a buffer be- 
tween themselves and Illinois and making way for 
Iowa. The Winnebago consented, about this time, 
to move west of the Mississippi and occupy a por- 
tion of the Neutral Strip. 

The completion of the Indian frontier to the upper 
lakes was the work of the early thirties. The pur- 
chase at Fort Armstrong had made the line follow 
the north boundary of Missouri and run along the 
west line of this Black Hawk purchase to the Neu- 
tral Strip. A second Black Hawk purchase in 1837 
reduced their lands by a million and a quarter acres 
just west of the purchase of 1832. Other agree- 
ments with the Potawatomi, the Sioux, the Menom- 
inee, and the Chippewa established a final line. Of 
these four nations, one was removed and the others 
forced back within their former territories. The 
Potawatomi, more correctly known as the Chippewa, 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 27 

Ottawa, and Potawatomi, since the tribe consisted 
of Indians related by marriage but representing 
these three stocks, had occupied the west shore of 
Lake Michigan from Chicago to Milwaukee. After 
a great council at Chicago in 1833 they agreed to 
cross the Mississippi and take up lands west of the 
Sauk and Foxes and east of the Missouri, in present 
Iowa. The Menominee, their neighbors to the 
north, with a shore line from Milwaukee to the 
Menominee River, gave up their lake front during 
these years, agreeing in 1836 to live on diminished 
lands west of Green Bay and including the left bank 
of the Wisconsin River. 

The Sioux and Chippewa receded to the north. 
Always hereditary enemies, they had accepted a 
common but ineffectual demarcation line at the old 
treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1825. In 1837 both 
tribes made further cessions, introducing between 
themselves the greater portion of Wisconsin. The 
Sioux acknowledged the Mississippi as their future 
eastern boundary, while the Chippewa accepted a 
new line which left the Mississippi at its junction 
with the Crow Wing, ran north of Lake St. Croix, 
and extended thence to the north side of the Me- 
nominee country. With trifling exceptions, the north 
flank of the Indian frontier had been completed b}^ 
1837. It lay beyond the farthest line of white occu- 
pation, and extended unbroken from the bend of 
the Missouri to Green Bay. 

While the north flank of the Indian frontier was 



28 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

being established beyond the probable limits of 
white advance, its south flank was extended in an 
unbroken series of reservations from the bend of the 
Missouri to the Texas line. The old Spanish bound- 
ary of the Sabine River and the hundredth meridian 
remained in 1840 the western limit of the United 
States. Farther west the Comanche and the plains 
Indians roamed indiscriminately over Texas and the 
United States. The Caddo, in 1835, were per- 
suaded to leave Louisiana and cross the Sabine into 
Texas; while the quieting of the Osage title in 1825 
had freed the country north of the Red River from 
native occupants and opened the way for the 
colonizing policy. 

The southern part of the Indian Country was early 
set aside as the new home of the eastern confed- 
eracies lying near the Gulf of Mexico. The Creeks, 
Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole had 
in the twenties begun to feel the pressure of the 
southern states. Jackson's campaigns had weak- 
ened them even before the cession of Florida to 
the United States removed their place of refuge. 
Georgia was demanding their removal when Monroe 
announced his policy. 

A new home for the Choctaw was provided in the 
extreme Southwest in 1830. Ten years before, this 
nation had been given a home in Arkansas territory, 
but now, at Dancing Rabbit Creek, it received a new 
eastern limit in a line drawn from Fort Smith on the 
Arkansas due south to the Red River. Arkansas 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 29 

had originally reached from the Mississippi to the 
hundredth meridian, but it was, after this Choctaw 
cession, cut down to the new Choctaw line, which 
remains its boundary to-day. From Fort Smith 
the new boundary was run northerly to the southwest 
corner of Missouri. 

The Creeks and Cherokee promised in 1833 to go 
into the Indian Country, west of Arkansas and 
north of the Choctaw. The Creeks became the 
neighbors of the Choctaw, separated from them by 
the Canadian River, while the Cherokee adjoined 
the Creeks on the north and east. With small ex- 
ceptions the whole of the present state of Oklahoma 
was thus assigned to these three nations. The 
migrations from their old homes came deliberately 
in the thirties and forties. The Chickasaw in 1837 
purchased from the Choctaw the right to occupy the 
western end of their strip between the Red and 
Canadian. The Seminole had acquired similar 
rights among the Creeks, but were so reluctant to 
keep the pledge to emigrate that their removal 
taxed the ability of the United States army for 
several years. 

Between the southern portion of the Indian 
Country and the Missouri bend minor tribes were 
colonized in profusion. The Quapaw and United 
Seneca and Shawnee nations were put into the 
triangle between the Neosho and Missouri. The 
Cherokee received an extra grant in the '' Cherokee 
Neutral Strip," between the Osage line of 1825 and 



30 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the Missouri line. Next to the north was made a 
reserve for the New York Indians, which they re- 
fused to occupy. The new Miami home came 
next, along the Missouri line; while north of this 
were little reserves for individual bands of Ottawa 
and Chippewa, for the Piankashaw and Wea, the 
Kaskaskia and Peoria, the last of which adjoined 
the Shawnee line of 1825 upon the south. 

The Indian frontier, determined upon in 1825, 
had by 1840 been carried into fact, and existed un- 
broken from the Red River and Texas to the Lakes. 
The exodus from the old homes to the new had in 
many instances been nearly completed. The tribes 
were more easily persuaded to promise than to act, 
and the wrench was often hard enough to produce 
sullenness or even war when the moment of depar- 
ture arrived. A few isolated bands had not even 
agreed to go. But the figures of the migrations, 
published from year to year during the thirties, 
show that all of the more important nations east of 
the new frontier had ceded their lands, and that by 
1840 the migration was substantially over. 

President Monroe had urged as an essential part 
of the removal policy that when the Indians had 
been transferred and colonized they should be care- 
fully educated into civilization, and guarded from 
contamination by the whites. Congress, in various 
laws, tried to do these things. The policy of re- 
moval, which had been only administrative at the 
start, was confirmed by law in 1830. A formal 




Chief Keokuk 
From a photograph of a contemporary oil painting- owned by Judge C. F. Davis, 
duced by permission of the Historical Department of Iowa. 



Eepro- 



THE INDIAN FRONTIER 31 

Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1832, under 
the supervision of a commissioner. In 1834 was 
passed the Indian Intercourse Act, which remained 
the fundamental law for half a century. 

The various treaties of migration had contained 
the pledge that never again should the Indians be 
removed without their consent, that whites should 
be excluded from the Indian Country, and that their 
lands should never be included within the limits of 
any organized territory or state. To these guaran- 
tees the Intercourse Act attempted to give force. 
The Indian Country was divided into superintenden- 
cies, agencies, and sub-agencies, into which white 
entry, without license, was prohibited by law. As 
the tribes were colonized, agents and schools and 
blacksmiths were furnished to them in what was a 
real attempt to fulfil the terms of the pledge. The 
tribes had gone beyond the limits of probable ex- 
tension of the United States, and there they were to 
settle down and stay. By 1835 it was possible for 
President Jackson to announce to Congress that 
the plan approached its consummation: '^All pre- 
ceding experiments for the improvement of the 
Indians" had failed; but now ^'no one can doubt 
the moral duty of the Government of the United 
States to protect and if possible to preserve and 
perpetuate the scattered remnants of this race which 
are left within our borders. . . . The pledge of the 
United States," he continued, ^^has been given by 
Congress that the country destined for the residence 



32 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

of this people shall be forever ' secured and guaran- 
teed to them. ' . . . No political communities can 
be formed in that extensive region. ... A barrier 
has thus been raised for their protection against the 
encroachment of our citizens.^' And now, he con- 
cluded, ^Hhey ought to be left to the progress of 
events." 

The policy of the United States towards the wards 
was generally benevolent. Here, it was sincere, 
whether wise or not. As it turned out, however, 
the new Indian frontier had to contend with move- 
ments of population, resistless and unforeseen. No 
Joshua, no Canute, could hold it back. The re- 
sult was inevitable. The Indian, wrote one of the 
frontiersmen in a later day, speaking in the language 
of the West, ^' is a savage, noxious animal, and his 
actions are those of a ferocious beast of prey, un- 
softened by any touch of pity or mercy. For them 
he is to be blamed exactly as the wolf or tiger is 
blamed. " But by 1840 an Indian frontier had been 
erected, coterminous with the agricultural frontier, 
and beyond what was believed to be the limit of 
expansion. The American desert and the Indian 
frontier, beyond the bend of the Missouri, were 
forever to be the western boundary of the United 
States. 



CHAPTER III 

IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 

In the end of the thirties the ''right wing'^ of the 
frontier, as a colonel of dragoons described it, ex- 
tended northeasterly from the bend of the Mis- 
souri to Green Bay. It was an irregular line beyond 
which lay the Indian tribes, and behind which was a 
population constantly becoming more restless and 
aggressive. That it should have been a permanent 
boundary is not conceivable; yet Congress pro- 
fessed to regard it as such, and had in 1836 ordered 
the survey and construction of a military road from 
the mouth of the St. Peter's to the Red River. The 
maintenance of the southern half of the frontier 
was perhaps practicable, since the tradition of the 
American desert was long to block migration beyond 
the limits of Missouri and Arkansas, but north and 
east of Fort Leavenworth were lands too alluring 
to be safe in the control of the new Indian Bureau. 
And already before the thirties were over the upper 
Mississippi country had become a factor in the west- 
ward movement. 

A few years after the EngHsh war the United 
States had erected a fort at the junction of the St. 
Peter's and the Mississippi, near the present city of 

D 33 



34 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

St. Paul. In 1805, Zebulon Montgomery Pike had 
treated with the Sioux tribes at this point, and by 
1824 the new post had received the name Fort 
SneUing, which it was to retain until after the ad- 
mission of Minnesota as a state. Pike and his 
followers had worked their way up the Mississippi 
from St. Louis or Prairie du Chien in skiffs or 
keelboats, and had found little of consequence in 
the way of white occupation save a few fur-trading 
posts and the lead mines of Du Buque. Until after 
the English war, indeed, and the admission of Illi- 
nois, there had been little interest in the country 
up the river; but during the early twenties the lead 
deposits around Du Buque's old claim became the 
centre of a business that soon made new treaty 
negotiations with the northern Indians necessary. 

On both sides of the Mississippi, between the 
mouths of the Wisconsin and the Rock, lie the ex- 
tensive lead fields which attracted Du Buque in 
the days of the Spanish rule, and which now in the 
twenties induced an American immigration. The 
ease with which these diggings could be worked and 
the demand of a growing frontier population for 
lead, brought miners ilito the borderland of Illinois, 
Wisconsin, and Iowa long before either of the last 
states had acquired name or boundary or the Indian 
possessors of the soil had been satisfied and re- 
moved. The nations of Winnebago, Sauk and 
Foxes, and Potawatomi were most interested in 
this new white invasion, while all were reluctant to 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 35 

yield the lands to the incoming pioneers. The 
Sauk and Foxes had given up their claim to nearly 
all the lead country in 1804 ; the Potawatomi ceded 
portions of it in 1829; and the Winnebago in the 
same year made agreements covering the mines 
within the present state of Wisconsin. 

Gradually in the later twenties the pioneer miners 
came in, one by one. From St. Louis they came up 
the great river, or from Lake Michigan they crossed 
the old portage of the Fox and Wisconsin. The 
southern reenforcements looked much to Fort Arm- 
strong on Rock Island for protection. The north- 
ern, after they had left Fort Howard at Green Bay, 
were out of touch until they arrived near the 
old trading post at Prairie du Chien. War with 
the Winnebago in 1827 was followed in 1828 by 
the erection of another United States fort, — at the 
portage, and known as Fort Winnebago. Thus the 
United States built forts to defend a colonization 
which it prohibited by law and treaty. 

The individual pioneers differed much in their 
morals and their cultural antecedents, but were uni- 
form in their determination to enjoy the profits for 
which they had risked the dangers of the wilderness. 
Notable among them, and typical of their highest 
virtues, was Henry Dodge, later governor of Wis- 
consin, and representative and senator for his state 
in Congress, but now merely one of the first in the 
frontier movement. It is related of him that in 
1806 he had been interested in the filibustering ex- 



36 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

pedition of Aaron Burr, and had gone as far as New 
Madrid, to join the party, before he learned that 
it was called treason. He turned back in disgust. 
'^On reaching St. Genevieve," his chronicler con- 
tinues, ^Hhey found themselves indicted for treason 
by the grand jury then in session. Dodge sur- 
rendered himself, and gave bail for his appearance; 
but feeling outraged by the action of the grand jury 
he pulled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and whipt 
nine of the jurors; and would have whipt the rest, 
if they had not run away. " With such men to deal 
with, it was always difficult to enforce unpopular 
laws upon the frontier. Dodge had no hesitation 
in settling upon his lead diggings in the mineral 
country and in defying the Indian agents, who did 
their best to persuade him to leave the forbidden 
country. On the west bank of the Mississippi 
federal authority was successful in holding off the 
miners, but the east bank was settled between 
Galena and Mineral Point before either the Indian 
title had been fully quieted, or the lands had been 
surveyed and opened to purchase by the United 
States. 

The Indian war of 1827, the erection of Fort Win- 
nebago in 1828, the cession of their mineral lands by 
the Winnebago Indians in 1829, are the events most 
important in the development of the first settlements 
in the new Northwest. In 1829 and 1830 pioneers 
came up the Mississippi to the diggings in increasing 
numbers, while farmers began co cast covetous eyes 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 37 

upon the prairies lying between Lake Michigan and 
the Mississippi. These were the lands which the 
Sauk and Fox tribes had surrendered in 1804, but 
over which they still retained rights of occupation 
and the chase until Congress should sell them. The 
entry of every American farmer was a violation of 
good faith and law, and so the Indians regarded it. 
Their largest city and the graves of their ancestors 
were in the peninsula between the Rock and the 
Mississippi, and as the invaders seized the lands, 
their resentment passed beyond control. The Black 
Hawk War was the forlorn attempt to save the lands. 
When it ended in crushing defeat, the United States 
exercised its rights of conquest to compel a revision 
of the treaty limits. 

The great treaties of 1832 and 1833 not only 
removed all Indian obstruction from Illinois, but 
prepared the way for further settlement in both 
Wisconsin and Iowa. The Winnebago agreed to 
migrate to the Neutral Strip in Iowa, the Pota- 
watomi accepted a reserve near the Missouri River, 
while the Black Hawk purchase from the offend- 
ing Sauk and Foxes opened a strip some forty 
miles wide along the west bank of the Mississippi. 
These Indian movements were a part of the general 
concentrating policy made in the belief that a per- 
manent Indian frontier could be established. After 
the Black Hawk War came the creation of the Indian 
Bureau, the ordering of the great western road, and 
the erection of a frontier police. Henry Dodge was 



38 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

one of the few individuals to emerge from the war with 
real glory. His reward came when Congress formed 
a regiment of dragoons for frontier police, and made 
him its colonel. In his regiment he operated up and 
down the long frontier for three years, making ex- 
peditions beyond the line to hold Pawnee confer- 
ences and meetings with the tribes of the great 
plains, and resigning his command only in time 
to be the first governor of the new territory of Wis- 
consin, in 1836. He knew how little dependence 
could be placed on the permanency of the right 
wing of the frontier. ^^Nor let gentlemen forget," 
he reminded his colleagues in Congress a few years 
later, ^Hhat we are to have continually the same 
course of settlements going on upon our border. 
They are perpetually advancing westward. They 
will reach, they will cross, the Rocky Mountains, 
and never stop till they have reached the shores of 
the Pacific. Distance is nothing to our people. . . . 
[They will] turn the whole region into the happy 
dwellings of a free and enlightened people." 

The Black Hawk War and its resulting treaties at 
once quieted the Indian title and gave ample ad- 
vertisement to the new Northwest. As yet there had 
been no large migration to the West beyond Lake 
Michigan. The pioneers who had provoked the 
war had been few in number and far from their base 
upon the frontier. Mere access to the country had 
been difficult until after the opening of the Erie 
Canal, and even then steamships did not run regu- 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 39 

larly on Lake Michigan until after 1832. But no- 
toriety now tempted an increasing wave of settlers. 
Congress woke up to the need of some territorial 
adjustment for the new country. 

Ever since Illinois had been admitted in 1818, 
Michigan had been the one remaining territory of 
the old Northwest, including the whole area north 
of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and extending from 
Lake Huron to the Mississippi River. Her huge 
size was admittedly temporary, but as no large 
centre of population existed outside of Detroit, it was 
convenient to simplify the federal jurisdiction in 
this fashion. The lead mines on the Mississippi 
produced a secondary centre of population in the 
late twenties and pointed to an early division of 
Michigan. But before this could be accomplished 
the Black Hawk purchase had carried the Mississippi 
centre of population to the right bank of the river. 
The American possessions on this bank, west of the 
river, had been cast adrift without political organiza- 
tion on the admission of Missouri in 1821. Now 
the appearance of a vigorous population in an unor- 
ganized region compelled Congress to take some 
action, and thus, for temporary purposes, Michigan 
was enlarged in 1834. Her new boundary extended 
west to the Missouri River, between the state of 
Missouri and Canada. The new Northwest, which 
may be held to include Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minne- 
sota, started its political history as a remote settle- 
ment in a vast territory of Michigan, with its seat of 



40 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

government at Detroit. Before it was cut off as the 
territory of Wisconsin in 1836 much had been done 
in the way of populating it. 

The boom of the thirties brought Arkansas and 
Michigan into the Union as states, and started the 
growth of the new Northwest. The industrial activ- 
ity of the period was based on speculation in public 
lands and routes of transportation. America was 
transportation mad. New railways were building 
in the East and being projected West. Canals were 
turning the western portage paths into water high- 
ways. The speculative excitement touched the field 
of religion as well as economics, producing new sects 
by the dozen, and bringing schisms into the old. 
And population moving already in its inherent rest- 
lessness was made more active in migration by the 
hard times of the East in 1833 and 1834. 

The immigrants brought to the Black Hawk 
purchase and its vicinity, in the boom of the thirties, 
came chiefly by the river route. The lake route 
was just beginning to be used; not until the Civil 
War did the traffic of the upper Mississippi natu- 
rally and generally seek its outlet by Lake Michigan. 
The Mississippi now carried more than its share of 
the home seekers. 

Steamboats had been plying on western waters in 
increasing numbers since 1811. By 1823, one had 
gone as far north on the Mississippi as Fort Snelling, 
while by 1832 the Missouri had been ascended to 
Fort Union. In the thirties an extensive packet 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 41 

service gathered its passengers and freight at Pitts- 
burg and other points on the Ohio, carrying them 
by a devious voyage of 1400 miles to Keokuk, 
near the southeast corner of the new Black 
Hawk lands. Wagons and cattle, children and 
furniture, crowded the decks of the boats. The 
aristocrats of emigration rode in the cabins provided 
for them, but the great majority of home seekers 
lived on deck and braved the elements upon the 
voyage. Explosions, groundings, and collisions en- 
livened the reckless river traffic. But in 1836 
Governor Dodge found more than 22,000 inhabitants 
in his new territory of Wisconsin, most of whom had 
reached the promised land by way of the river. 

For those whom the long river journey did not 
please, or who lived inland in Ohio or Indiana, the; 
national road was a help. In 1825 the continuation 
of the Cumberland Road through Ohio had been 
begun. By 1836 enough of it was done to direct the 
overland course of migration through Indianapolis 
towards central Illinois. The Conestoga wagon, 
which had already done its share in crossing the 
Alleghanies, now carried a second generation to the 
Mississippi. At Dubuque and Buffalo and Burling- 
ton ferries were established before 1836 to take the 
immigrants across the Mississippi into the new West. 

By the terms of its treaty, the Black Hawk pur- 
chase was to be vacated by the Indians in the summer 
of 1833. Before that year closed, its settlement had 
begun, despite the fact that the government surveys 



42 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

had not yet been made. Here, as elsewhere, the 
frontier farmer paid little regard to the legal basis of 
his life. He settled upon unoccupied lands as he 
needed them, trusting to the public opinion of the 
future to secure his title. 

The legislature of Michigan watched the migration 
of 1833 and 1834, and in the latter year created the 
two counties of Dubuque and Demoine, beyond 
the Mississippi, embracing these settlements. At the 
old claim a town of miners appeared by magic, 
able shortly to boast ^Hhat the first white man hung 
in Iowa in a Christian-like manner was Patrick 
O'Conner, at Dubuque, in June, 1834." Dubuque 
was a mining camp, differing from the other villages 
in possessing a larger proportion of the lawless ele- 
ment. Generally, however, this Iowa frontier was 
peaceful in comparison with other frontiers. Life 
and property were safe, and except for its dealings 
with the Indians and the United States government, 
in which frontiers have rarely recognized a law, 
the community was law-abiding. It stands in some 
contrast with another frontier building at the same 
time up the valley of the Arkansas. ^^Fent Noland 
of Batesville, " wrote a contemporary of one of the 
heroes of this frontier, ^4s in every way one of the 
most remarkable men of the West; for such is 
the versatility of his genius that he seems equally 
adapted to every species of effort, intellectual or 
physical. With a like unerring aim he shoots a 
bullet or a hon mot; and wields the pen or the Bowie 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 43 

knife with the same thought, swift rapidity of 
motion, and energetic fury of manner. Sunday he 
will write an eloquent dissertation on religion; 
Monday he rawhides a rogue; Tuesday he com- 
poses a sonnet, set in silver stars and breathing the 
perfume of roses to some fair maid's eyebrows; 
Wednesday he fights a duel; Thursday he does up 
brown the personal character of Senators Sevier 
and Ashley; Friday he goes to the ball dressed in 
the most finical superfluity of fashion and shines 
the soul of wit and the sun of merry badinage among 
all the gay gentlemen; and to close the triumphs of 
the week, on Saturday night he is off thirty miles 
to a country dance in the Ozark Mountains, where 
they trip it on the light fantastic toe in the famous 
jig of the double-shuffle around a roaring log heap 
fire in the woods all night long, while between the 
dances Fent Noland sings some beautiful wild song, 
as ^Lucy Neal' or ^Juliana Johnson.' Thus Fent 
is a myriad-minded Proteus of contradictory char- 
acters, many-hued as the chameleon fed on the dews 
and suckled at the breast of the rainbow." Much 
of this luxuriant imagery was lacking farther north. 
The first phase of this development of the new 
Northwest was ended in 1837, when the general panic 
brought confusion to speculation throughout the 
United States. For four years the sanguine hopes 
of the frontier had led to large purchases of public 
lands, to banking schemes of wildest extravagance, 
and to railroad promotion without reason or de- 



44 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

mand. The specie circular of 1836 so deranged the 
currency of the whole United States that the effort 
to distribute the surplus in 1837 was fatal to the 
speculative boom. The new communities suffered 
for their hopeful attempts. When the panic broke, 
the line of agricultural settlement had been pushed 
considerably beyond the northern and western 
limits of Illinois. The new line ran near to the Fox 
and Wisconsin portage route and the wesi: line of 
the Black Hawk purchase. Milwaukee and South- 
port had been founded on the lake shore, hopeful 
of a great commerce that might rival the possessions 
of Chicago. Madison and its vicinity had been 
developed. The lead country in Wisconsin had 
grown in population. Across the river, Dubuque, 
Davenport, and Burlington gave evidence of a 
growing community in the country still farther west. 
Nearly the whole area intended for white occupation 
by the Indian policy had been settled, so that any 
further extension must be at the expense of the 
Indians' guaranteed lands. 

On the eve of the panic, which depopulated many 
of the villages of the new strip, Michigan had been 
admitted. Her possessions west of Lake Michigan 
had been reorganized as a new territory of Wisconsin, 
with a capital temporarily at Belmont, where Henry 
Dodge, first governor, took possession in the fall of 
1836. A territorial census showed that Wisconsin 
had a population of 22,214 in 1836, divided nearly 
equally by the Mississippi. Most of the population 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 45 

was on the banks of the great river, near the lead 
mines and the Black Hawk purchase, while only a 
fourth could be found near the new cities along the 
lake. The outlying settlements were already press- 
ing against the Indian neighbors, so that the new 
governor soon was obliged to conduct negotiations 
for further cessions. The Chippewa, Menominee, 
and Sioux all came into council within two years, 
the Sioux agreeing to retire west of the Mississippi, 
while the others receded far into the north, leaving 
most of the present Wisconsin open to development. 
These treaties completed the line of the Indian fron- 
tier as it was established in the thirties. 

The Mississippi divided the population of Wis- 
consin nearly equally in 1836, but subsequent years 
witnessed greater growth upon her western bank. 
Never in the westward movement had more attrac- 
tive farms been made available than those on the 
right bank now reached by the river steamers and 
the ferries from northern Illinois. Two years after 
the erection of Wisconsin the western towns re- 
ceived their independent establishment, when in 
1838 Iowa Territory was organized by Congress, 
including everything between the Mississippi and 
Missouri rivers, and north of the state of Missouri. 
Burlington, a village of log houses with perhaps five 
hundred inhabitants, became the seat of govern- 
ment of the new territory, while Wisconsin retired 
east of the river to a new capital at Madison. At 
Burlington a first legislature met in the autumn, to 



46 



THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 



choose for a capital Iowa City, and to do what it 
could for a community still suffering from the re- 
sults of the panic. 

The only Iowa lands open to lawful settlement 
were those of the Black Hawk purchase, many of 
which were themselves not surveyed and on the 
market. But the pioneers paid little heed to this. 
Leaving titles to the future, they cleared their 
farms, broke the sod, and built their houses. 




Iowa Sod Plow 

The heavy sod of the Iowa prairies was beyond 
the strength of the individual settler. In the years 
of first development the professional sod breaker 
was on hand, a most important member of his com- 
munity, with his great plough, and large teams of 
from six to twelve oxen, making the ground ready 
for the first crop. In the frontier mind the land 
belonged to him who broke it, regardless of mere 
title. The quarrel between the squatter and the 
speculator was perennial. Congress in its laws 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 47 

sought to dispose of lands by auction to the highest 
bidder, — a scheme through which the sturdy im- 
pecunious farmer saw his clearing in danger of being 
bought over his modest bid by an undeserving 
speculator. Accordingly the history of Iowa and 
Wisconsin is full of the claims associations by which 
the squatters endeavored to protect their rights 
and succeeded well. By voluntary association they 
agreed upon their claims and bounds. Transfers 
and sales were recorded on their books. When at 
last the advertised day came for the formal sale of 
the township by the federal land officer the popu- 
lation attended the auction in a body, while their 
chosen delegate bid off the whole area for them at 
the minimum price, and without competition. At 
times it happened that the speculator or the casual 
purchaser tried to bid, but the squatters present 
with their cudgels and air of anticipation were 
usually able to prevent what they beheved to be 
unfair interference with their rights. The claims 
associations were entirely illegal; yet they reveal, 
as few American institutions do, the orderly ten- 
dencies of an American community even when its 
organization is in defiance of existing law. 

The development of the new territories of Iowa 
and Wisconsin in the decade after their erection 
carried both far towards statehood. Burlington, 
the earliest capital of Iowa, was in 1840 ^Hhe larg- 
est, wealthiest, most business-doing and most 
fashionable city, on or in the neighborhood of the 



48 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Upper Mississippi. . . . We have three or four 
churches/' said one of its papers, ^'a theatre, and a 
dancing school in full blast." As early as 1843 the 
Black Hawk purchase was overrun. The Sauk and 
Foxes had ceded provisionally all their Iowa lands 
and the Potawatomi were in danger. '^Although 
it is but ten years to-day," said their agent, speaking 
of their Chicago treaty of 1833, ^'the tide of emigra- 
tion has rolled onwards to the far West, until the 
whites are now crowded closely along the southern 
side of these lands, and will soon swarm along the 
eastern side, to exhibit the very worst traits of the 
white man's character, and destroy, by fraud and 
illicit intercourse, the remnant of a powerful people, 
now exposed to their influence." Iowa was ad- 
mitted to the Union in 1846, after bickering over 
her northern boundary; Wisconsin followed in 1848; 
the remnant of both, now known as Minnesota, was 
erected as a territory in its own right in the next year. 
Fort Snelling was nearly twenty years old before 
it came to be more than a distant military out- 
post. Until the treaties of 1837 it was in the midst 
of the Sioux with no white neighbors save the 
agents of the fur companies, a few refugees from the 
Red River country, and a group of more or less 
disreputable hangers-on. An enlargement of the 
military reserve in 1837 led to the eviction by the 
troops of its near-by squatters, with the result that 
one of these took up his grog shop, left the peninsula 
between the Mississippi and St. Peter's, and erected 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 49 

the first permanent settlement across the former, 
where St. Paul now stands. Iowa had desired a 
northern boundary which should touch the St. 
Peter's River, but when she was admitted without 
it and Wisconsin followed with the St. Croix as her 
western limit, Minnesota was temporarily without 
a government. 

The Minnesota territorial act of 1849 preceded 
the active colonization of the country around St. 
Paul. Mendota, Fort Snelling, St. Anthony's, and 
Stillwater all came into active being, while the most 
enterprising settlers began to push up the Minne- 
sota River, as the St. Peter's now came to be called. 
As usual the Indians were in the way. As usual 
the claims associations were resorted to. And 
finally, as usual the Indians yielded. At Mendota 
and Traverse des Sioux, in the autumn of 1851, 
the magnates of the young territory witnessed great 
treaties by which the Sioux, surrendering their 
portion of the permanent Indian frontier, gave up 
most of their vast hunting grounds to accept valley 
reserves along the Minnesota. And still more 
rapidly population came in after the cession. 

The new Northwest was settled after the great 
day of the keelboat on western waters. Iowa and 
the lead country had been reached by the steamboats 
of the Mississippi. The Milwaukee district was 
reached by the steamboats from the lakes. The 
upper Mississippi frontier was now even more 
thoroughly dependent on the river navigation than 



50 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

its neighbors had been, while its first period was over 
before any railroad played an immediate part in its 
development. 

The boom period between the panics of 1837 
and 1857 thus added another concentric band 
along the northwest border, disregarding the Indian 
frontier and introducing a large population where 
the prophet of the early thirties had declared that 
civilization could never go. The Potawatomi of 
Iowa had yielded in 1846, the Sioux in 1851. The 
future of the other tribes in their so-called perma- 
nent homes was in grave question by the middle of 
the decade. The new frontier by 1857 touched the 
tip of Lake Superior, included St. Paul and the 
lower Minnesota valley, passed around Spirit Lake 
in northwest Iowa, and reached the Missouri near 
Sioux City. In a few more years the right wing of 
the frontier would run due north from the bend of 
the Missouri. 

The hopeful life of the fifties surpassed that of the 
thirties in its speculative zeal. The home seeker 
had to struggle against the occasional Indian and 
the unscrupulous land agent as well as his own too 
sanguine disposition. Fictitious town sites had to 
be distinguished from the real. Fraudulent dealers 
more than once sold imaginary lots and farms from 
beautifully lithographed maps to eastern investors. 
Occasionally whole colonies of migrants would appear 
on the steamboat wharves bound for ndn-existent 
towns. And when the settler had escaped fraud, 



IOWA AND THE NEW NORTHWEST 51 

and avoided or survived the racking torments of fever 
or cholera, the Indian danger was sometimes real. 

Iowa had advanced her northwest frontier up the 
Des Moines River, past the old frontier fort, until in 
1856 a couple of trading houses and a few families had 
reached the vicinity of Spirit Lake. Here, in March, 
1857, one of the settlers quarrelled with a wandering 
Indian over a dog. The Indian belonged to Ink- 
paduta's band of Sioux, one not included in the 
treaty of 1851. Forty-seven dead settlers slaught- 
ered by the band were found a few days later by a 
visitor to the village. A hard winter campaign by 
regulars from Fort Ridgely resulted in the rescue 
of some of the captives, but the indignant demand 
of the frontier for retaliation was never granted. 

In spite of fraud and danger the population grew. 
For the first time the railroad played a material 
part in its advance. The great eastern trunk lines 
had crossed the Alleghanies into the Ohio valley. 
Chicago had received connection with the East in 
1852. The Mississippi had been reached by 1854. 
In the spring of 1856 all Iowa celebrated the opening 
of a railway bridge at Davenport. 

The new Northwest escaped its dangers only to 
fall a victim to its own ambition. An earlier dec- 
ade of expansion had produced panic in 1837. Now 
greater expansion and prosperity stimulated an 
over-development that chartered railways and 
even built them between points that scarcely ex- 
isted and through country rank in its prairie growth, 



52 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

wild with game, and without inhabitants. Over- 
speculation on borrowed money finally brought retri- 
bution in the panic of 1857, with Minnesota about 
to frame a constitution and enter the Union. The 
panic destroyed the railways and bankrupted the 
inhabitants. At Duluth, a canny pioneer, who 
lived in the present, refused to swap a pair of boots 
for a town lot in the future city. At the other end 
of the line a floating population was prepared to 
hurry west on the first news of Pike's Peak gold. 

But a new Northwest had come into life in spite 
of the vicissitudes of 1837 and 1857. Wisconsin, Min- 
nesota, and Iowa had in 1860 ten times the popula- 
tion of Illinois at the opening of the Black Hawk 
War. More than a million and a half of pioneers had 
settled within these three new states, building their 
towns and churches and schools, pushing back the 
right flank of the Indian frontier, and reiterating 
their perennial demand that the Indian must go. 
This was the first departure from the policy laid 
down by Monroe and carried out by Adams and 
Jackson. Before this movement had ended, that 
policy had been attacked from another side, and was 
once more shown to be impracticable. The Indian 
had too little strength to compel adherence to the 
contract, and hence suffered from this encroachment 
by the new Northwest. His final destruction came 
from the overland traffic, which already by 1857 had 
destroyed the fiction of the American desert, and 
introduced into his domain thousands of pioneers 
lured by the call of the West and the lust for gold. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 



England had had no colonies so remote and in- 
accessible as the interior provinces of Spain, which 
stretched up into the country between the Rio 
Grande and the Pacific for more than fifteen hun- 
dred miles above Vera Cruz. Before the English 
seaboard had received its earliest colonists, the 
hand of Spain was already strong in the upper waters 
of the Rio Grande, where her outposts had been 
planted around the little adobe village of Santa Fe, 
For more than two hundred years this life had gone 
on, unchanged by invention or discovery, unen- 
lightened by contact with the world or admixture of 
foreign blood. Accepting, with a docility character- 
istic of the colonists of Spain, the hard conditions 
and restrictions of the law, communication with 
these villages of Chihuahua and New Mexico had 
been kept in the narrow rut worn through the hills 
by the pack-trains of the king. 

It was no stately procession that wound up into 
the hills yearly to supply the Mexican frontier. 
From Vera Cruz the port of entry, through Mexico 
City, and thence north along the highlands through 
San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas to Durango, and 

53 



54 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

thence to Chihuahua, and up the valley of the 
Rio Grande to Santa Fe climbed the long pack- 
trains and the clumsy ox-carts that carried into the 
provinces their whole supply from outside. The 
civilization of the provincial life might fairly be 
measured by the length, breadth, and capacity of 
this transportation route. Nearly two thousand 
miles, as the road meandered, of river, mountain 
gorge, and arid desert had to be overcome by the 
mule-drivers of the caravans. What their pack- 
animals could not carry, could not go. What had 
large bulk in proportion to its value must stay 
behind. The ancient commerce of the Orient, 
carried on camels across the Arabian desert, could 
afford to deal in gold and silver, silks, spices, and 
precious drugs ; in like manner, though in less degree, 
the world's contribution to these remote towns was 
confined largely to textiles, drugs, and trinkets of 
adornment. Yet the Creole and Mestizo population 
of New Mexico bore with these meagre supplies for 
more than two centuries without an effort to improve 
upon them. Their resignation gives some credit to 
the rigors of the Spanish colonial system which 
restricted their importation to the defined route and 
the single port. It is due as much, however, to the 
hard geographic fact which made Vera Cruz and 
Mexico, distant as they were, their nearest neighbors, 
until in the nineteenth century another civilization 
came within hailing distance, at its frontier in the 
bend of the Missouri. 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 55 

The Spanish provincials were at once willing to 
endure the rigors of the commercial system and to 
smuggle when they had a chance. So long as it 
was cheaper to buy the product of the annual caravan 
than to develop other sources of supply the caravans 
flourished without competition. It was not until 
after the expulsion of Spain and the independence of 
Mexico that a rival supply became important, but 
there are enough isolated events before this time to 
show what had to occur just so soon as the United 
States frontier came within range. 

The narrative of Pike after his return from Spanish 
captivity did something to reveal the existence of a 
possible market in Santa Fe. He had been engaged 
in exploring the western limits of the Louisiana 
purchase, and had wandered into the valley of the 
Rio Grande while searching for the head waters of 
the Red River. Here he was arrested, in 1807, by 
Spanish troops, and taken to Chihuahua for exami- 
nation. After a short detention he was escorted to 
the limits of the United States, where he was released. 
He carried home the news of high prices and profit- 
able markets existing among the Mexicans. 

In 1811 an organized expedition set out to verify 
the statements of Pike. Rumor had come to the 
States of an insurrection in upper Mexico, which 
might easily abolish the trade restriction. But the 
revolt had been suppressed before the dozen or so of 
reckless Americans who crossed the plains had ar- 
rived at their destination. The Spanish authorities, 



56 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

restored to power and renewed vigor, received them 
with open prisons. In j ail they were kept at Chihua- 
hua, some for ten years, while the traffic which they 
had hoped to inaugurate remained still in the future. 
Their release came only with the independence of 
Mexico, which quickly broke down the barrier against 
importation and the foreigner. 

The Santa F6 trade commenced when the news of 
the Mexican revolution reached the border. Late 
in the fall of 1821 one William Becknell, chancing 
a favorable reception from Iturbide's officials, took 
a small train from the Missouri to New Mexico, in 
what proved to be a profitable speculation. He 
returned to the States in time to lead out a large 
party in the following summer. So long as the 
United States frontier lay east of the Missouri River 
there could have been no western traffic, but now 
that settlement had reached the Indian Country, 
and river steamers had made easy freighting from 
Pittsburg to Franklin or Independence, Santa Fe 
was nearer to the United States seaboard markets 
than to Vera Cruz. Hence the breach in the 
American desert and the Indian frontier made by 
this earliest of the overland trails. 

The year 1822 was not only the earliest in the 
Santa Fe trade, but it saw the first wagons taken 
across the plains. The freight capacity of the mule- 
train placed a narrow limit upon the profits and 
extent of trade. Whether a wagon could be hauled 
over the rough trails was a matter of considerable 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 



57 



doubt when Becknell and Colonel Cooper attempted 
it in this year. The experiment was so successful 
that within two years the pack-train was generally 
abandoned for the wagons by the Santa Fe traders. 




Overland Trails 



oearld^W^lS^f. I?, P^^^^?""^^ opened before 1840; that to California ap- 
peared about 1845; the Santa Fd trail had been uaed since 1821. The overland 
mail of 1858 followed the southern route. ^ --.o-ii. j.uc uverianu 

The wagons carried a miscellaneous freight. ''Cot- 
ton goods, consisting of coarse and fine cambrics, 
cahcoes, ^ domestic, shawls, handkerchiefs, steam- 
loom shirtings, and cotton hose,'' were in high 
demand. There were also ''a few woollen goods, 
consisting of super blues, stroudings, peHsse cloths,' 
and shawls, crapes, bombazettes, some hght articles 



58 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

of cutlery, silk shawls, and looking-glasses." Back- 
ward bound their freights were lighter. Many of the 
wagons, indeed, were sold as part of the cargo. The 
returning merchants brought some beaver skins and 
mules, but their Spanish-milled dollars and gold and 
silver bullion made up the bulk of the return freight. 

Such a commerce, even in its modest beginnings, 
could not escape the public eye. The patron of the 
West came early to its aid. Senator Thomas Hart 
Benton had taken his seat from the new state of 
Missouri just in time to notice and report upon the 
traffic. No public man was more confirmed in his 
friendship for the frontier trade than Senator 
Benton. The fur companies found him always on 
hand to get them favors or to 'Hurn aside the whip of 
calamity." Because of his influence his son-in-law, 
Fremont, twenty years later, explored the wilderness. 
Now, in 1824, he was prompt to demand encourage- 
ment. A large policy in the building of public 
roads had been accepted by Congress in this year. 
In the following winter Senator Benton's bill pro- 
vided 130,000 to mark and build a wagon road 
from Missouri to the United States border on the 
Arkansas. The earliest travellers over the road 
reported some annoyance from the Indians, whose 
hungry, curious, greedy bands would hang around 
their camps to beg and steal. In the Osage and 
Kansa treaties of 1825 these tribes agreed to let the 
traders traverse the country in peace. 

Indian treaties were not sufficient to protect the 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 59 

Santa Fe trade. The long journey from the fringe 
of settlement to the Spanish towns eight hundred 
miles southwest traversed both American and Mexi- 
can soil, crossing the international boundary on the 
Arkansas near the hundredth meridian. The Ind- 
ians of the route knew no national lines, and found 
a convenient refuge against pursuers from either 
nation in crossing the border. There was no military 
protection to the frontier at the American end of the 
trail until in 1827 the war department erected a new 
post on the Missouri, above the Kansas, calling it 
Fort Leavenworth. Here a few regular troops were 
stationed to guard the border and protect the traders. 
The post was due as much to the new Indian con- 
centration policy as to the Santa Fe trade. Its 
significance was double. Yet no one seems to have 
foreseen that the development of the trade through 
the Indian Country might prevent the accomplish- 
ment of Monroe's ideal of an Indian frontier. 

From Fort Leavenworth occasional escorts of 
regulars convoyed the caravans to the Southwest. 
In 1829 four companies of the sixth infantry, under 
Major Riley, were on duty. They joined the caravan 
at the usual place of organization. Council Grove, 
a few days west of the Missouri line, and marched 
with it to the confines of the United States. Along 
the march there had been some worry from the Ind- 
ians. After the caravan and escort had separated 
at the Arkansas the former, going on alone into 
Mexico, was scarcely out of sight of its guard before 



60 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

it was dangerously attacked. Major Riley rose 
promptly to the occasion. He immediately crossed 
the Arkansas into Mexico, risking the consequences 
of an invasion of friendly territory, and chastised the 
Indians. As the caravan returned, the Mexican 
authorities furnished an escort of troops which 
marched to the crossing. Here Major Riley, who 
had been waiting for them at Chouteau's Island all 
summer, met them. He entertained the Mexican 
officers with drill while they responded with a parade, 
chocolate, and ^^ other refreshments,'' as his report 
declares, and then he brought the traders back to the 
States by the beginning of November. 

There was some criticism in the United States of 
this costly use of troops to protect a private trade. 
Hezekiah Niles, who was always pleading for high 
protection to manufactures and receiving less than 
he wanted, complained that the use of four com- 
panies during a whole season was extravagant pro- 
tection for a trade whose annual profits were not 
over $120,000. The special convoy was rarely 
repeated after 1829. Fort Leavenworth and the 
troops gave moral rather than direct support. Colo- 
nel Dodge, with his dragoons, — for infantry were 
soon seen to be ridiculous in Indian campaigning, — 
made long expeditions and demonstrations in the 
thirties, reaching even to the slopes of the Rockies. 
And the Santa Fe caravans continued until the forties 
in relative safety. 

Two years after Major Riley's escort occurred an 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 61 

event of great consequence in the history of the 
Santa Fe trail. Josiah Gregg, impelled by ill health 
to seek a change of climate, made his first trip to 
Santa Fe in 1831. As an individual trader Gregg 
would call for no more comment than would any one 
who crossed the plains eight times in a single decade. 
But Gregg was no mere frontier merchant. He was 
watching and thinking during his entire career, 
examining into the details of Mexican life and history 
and tabulating the figures of the traffic. When he 
finally retired from the plains life which he had come 
to love so well, he produced, in two small volumes, 
the great classic of the trade: ^'The Commerce of 
the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa Fe Trader.'' 
It is still possible to check up details and add small 
bits of fact to supplement the history and descrip- 
tion of this commerce given by Gregg, but his book 
remains, and is likely to remain, the fullest and best 
source of information. Gregg had power of scien- 
tific observation and historical imagination, which, 
added to unusual literary ability, produced a mas- 
terpiece. 

The Sant^ Fe trade, begun in 1822, continued with 
moderate growth until 1843. This was its period of 
pioneer development. After the Mexican War the 
commerce grew to a vastly larger size, reaching its 
greatest volume in the sixties, just before the con- 
struction of the Pacific railways. But in its later 
years it was a matter of greater routine and less 
general interest than in those years of commence- 



62 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

ment during which it was educating the United States 
to a more complete knowledge of the southern por- 
tion of the American desert. Gregg gives a table 
in which he shows the approximate value of the trade 
for its first twenty-two years. To-day it seems 
strange that so trifling a commerce should have been 
national in its character and influence. In only one 
year, 1843, does he find that the eastern value of the 
goods sent to Santa Fe was above a quarter of a 
million dollars; in that year it reached $450,000, 
but in only two other years did it rise to the quarter 
million mark. In nine years it was under $100,000. 
The men involved were a mere handful. At the 
start nearly every one of the seventy men in the 
caravan was himself a proprietor. The total num- 
ber increased more rapidly than the number of inde- 
pendent owners. Three hundred and fifty were the 
most employed in any one year. The twenty-six 
wagons of 1824 became two hundred and thirty 
in 1843, but only four times in the interval were 
there so many as a hundred. 

Yet the Santa Fe trade was national in its im- 
portance. Its romance contained a constant appeal 
to a public that was reading the Indian tales of James 
Fenimore Cooper, and that loved stories of hardship 
and adventure. New Mexico was a foreign country 
with quaint people and strange habitations. The 
American desert, not much more than a chartless 
sea, framed and emphasized the traffic. If one must 
have confirmation of the truth that frontier causes 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 63 

have produced results far beyond their normal 
measure, such confirmation may be found here. 

The traders to Santa Fe commonly travelled to- 
gether in a single caravan for safety. In the earlier 
years they started overland from some Missouri 
town — Franklin most often — to a rendezvous at 
Council Grove. The erection of Fort Leavenworth 
and an increasing navigation of the Missouri River 
made possible a starting-point further west than 
Franklin; hence when this town was washed into the 
Missouri in 1828 its place was taken by the new settle- 
ment of Independence, further up the river and only 
twelve miles from the Missouri border. Here at 
Independence was done most of the general outfitting 
in the thirties. For the greater part of the year 
the town was dead, but for a few weeks in the spring 
it throbbed with the rough-and-ready life of the fron- 
tier. Landing of traders and cargoes, bartering for 
mules and oxen, building and repairing wagons and 
ox-yokes, and in the evening drinking and gam- 
bling among the hard men soon to leave port for the 
Southwest, — all these gave to Independence its name 
and place. From Independence to Council Grove, 
some one hundred and fifty miles, across the border, 
the wagons went singly or in groups. At the Grove 
they halted, waiting for an escort, or to organize in a 
general company for self-defence. Here in ordinary 
years the assembled traders elected a captain whose 
responsibility was complete, and whose authority 
was as great as he could make it by his own force. 



64 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Under him were lieutenants, and under the command 
of these the whole company was organized in guards 
and watches, for once beyond the Grove the company 
was in dangerous Indian Country in which eternal 
vigilance was the price of safety. 

The unit of the caravan was the wagon, — the 
same Pittsburg or Conestoga wagon that moved 
frontiersmen whenever and wherever they had to 
travel on land. It was drawn by from eight to twelve 
mules or oxen, and carried from three to five thou- 
sand pounds of cargo. Over the wagon were large 
arches covered with Osnaburg sheetings to turn 
water and protect the contents. The careful freighter 
used two thicknesses of sheetings, while the canny 
one slipped in between them a pair of blankets, 
which might thus increase his comfort outward 
bound, and be in an inconspicuous place to elude 
the vigilance of the customs officials at Santa Fe. 
Arms, mounts, and general equipment were innu- 
merable in variation, but the prairie schooner, as 
its white canopy soon named it, survived through 
its own superiority. 

At Council Grove the desert trip began. The jour- 
ney now became one across a treeless prairie, with 
water all too rare, and habitations entirely lacking. 
The first stage of the trail crossed the country, nearly 
west, to the great bend of the Arkansas River, two 
hundred and seventy miles from Independence. Up 
the Arkansas it raS-on, past Chouteau's Island, to 
Bent's Fort, near La Junta, Colorado, where fur 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 6b 

traders had established a post. Water was most 
scarce. Whether the caravan crossed the river at 
the Cimarron crossing or left it at Bent's Fort to 
follow up the Purgatoire, the pull was hard on trader 
and on stock. His oxen often reached Santa Fe 
with scarcely enough strength left to stand alone. 
But with reasonable success and skilful guidance the 
caravan might hope to surmount all these difficulties 
and at last enter Santa Fe, seven hundred and eighty 
miles away, in from six to seven weeks from Inde- 
pendence. 

When the Mexican War came in 1846, the Missouri 
frontier was familiar with all of the long trail to Santa 
Fe. Even in the East there had come to be some real 
interest in and some accurate knowledge of the desert 
and its thoroughfares. One of the earliest steps in the 
strategy of the war was the organization of an Army 
of the West at Fort Leavenworth, with orders to 
march overland against Mexico and Upper California. 

Colonel Stephen W. Kearny was given command 
of the invading army, which he recruited largely 
from the frontier and into which he incorporated a 
battalion of the Mormon emigrants who were, in the 
summer of 1846, near Council Bluffs, on their way to 
the Rocky Mountains and the country beyond. 
Kearny himself knew the frontier, duty having taken 
him in 1845 all the way to the mountains and back 
in the interest of policing the trails. By the end of 
June he was ready to begin the march towards 
Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, where there was 



66 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

to be a common rendezvous. To this point the 
army marched in separate columns, far enough apart 
to secure for all the force sufficient water and fodder 
from the plains. Up to Bent's Fort the march was 
little more than a pleasure jaunt. The trail was well 
known, and Indians, never likely to run heedlessly 
into danger, were well behaved. Beyond Bent's 
Fort the advance assumed more of a military aspect, 
for the enemy's country had been entered and 
resistance by the Mexicans was anticipated in the 
mountain passes north of Santa Fe. But the resist- 
ance came to naught, while the army, footsore and 
hot, marched easily into Santa Fe on August 18, 1846. 
In the palace of the governor the conquering officers 
were entertained as lavishly as the resources of the 
provinces would permit. ''We were too thirsty to 
judge of its merits," wrote one of them of the native 
wines and brandy which circulated freely; ''anything 
liquid and cool was palatable." With little more 
than the formality of taking possession New Mexico 
thus fell into the hands of the United States, while 
the war of conquest advanced further to the West. 
In the end of September Kearny started out from 
Santa Fe for California, where he arrived early in 
the following January. 

The conquest of the Southwest extended the boun- 
dary of the United States to the Gila and the Pacific, 
broadening the area of the desert within the United 
States and raising new problems of long-distance 
government in connection with the populations of 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 67 

New Mexico and California. The Santa Fe trail, 
with its continuance west of the Rio Grande, became 
the attenuated bond between the East and the West. 
From the Missouri frontier to California the way was 
through the desert and the Indian Country, with 
regular settlements in only one region along the route. 
The reluctance of foreign customs officers to permit 
trade disappeared with the conquest, so that the 
traffic with the Southwest and Cahfornia boomed 
during the fifties. 

The volume of the traffic expanded to proportions 
which had never been dreamed of before the conquest. 
Kearny's baggage-trains started a new era in plains 
freighting. The armies had continuously to be 
suppHed. Regular communication had to be main- 
tained for the new Southwest. But the freighting 
was no longer the adventurous pioneering of the 
Santa Fe traders. It became a matter of business, 
running smoothly along famihar channels. It ceased 
to have to do with the extension of geographic knowl- 
edge and came to have significance chiefly in con- 
nection with the organization of overland commerce. 
Between the Mexican and Civil wars was its new 
period of life. Finally, in the seventies, it gradually 
receded into history as the tentacles of the conti- 
nental railway system advanced into the desert. 

The Santa Fe trail was the first beaten path thrust 
m advance of the western frontier. Even to-day its 
course may be followed by the wheel ruts for much of 
the distance from the bend of the Missouri to Santa 



68 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Fe. Crossing the desert, it left civilized life behind 
it at the start, not touching it again until the end 
was reached. For nearly fifty years after the trade 
began, this character of the desert remained substan- 
tially unchanged. Agricultural settlement, which 
had rushed west along the Ohio and Missouri, stopped 
at the bend, and though the trail continued, settle- 
ment would not follow it. The Indian country and 
the American desert remained intact, while the Santa 
Fe trail, in advance of settlement, pointed the way of 
manifest destiny, as no one of the eastern trails had 
ever done. When the new states grew up on the Pa- 
cific, the desert became as an ocean traversed only 
by the prairie schooners in their beaten paths. 
Islands of settlement served but to accentuate the 
unpopulated condition of the Rocky Mountain 
West. 

The bend of the Missouri had been foreseen by the 
statesmen of the twenties as the limit of American 
advance. It might have continued thus had there 
really been nothing beyond it. But the profits of 
the trade to Santa Fe created a new interest and a 
connecting road. In nearly the same years the call 
of the fur trade led to the tracing of another path in 
the wilderness, running to a new goal. Oregon and 
the fur trade had stirred up so much interest beyond 
the Rockies that before Kearny marched his army 
into Santa Fe another trail of importance equal to 
his had been run to Oregon. 

The maintenance of the Indian frontier depended 



THE SANTA FE TRAIL 69 

upon the ability of the United States to keep whites 
out of the Indian Country. But with Oregon and 
Santa Fe beyond, this could never be. The trails 
had already shown the fallacy of the frontier policy 
before it had become a fact in 1840. 



CHAPTER V 



THE OREGON TRAIL 



The Santa Fe trade had just been started upon 
its long career when trappers discovered in the Rocky- 
Mountains, not far from where the forty-second 
parallel intersects the continental divide, an easy 
crossing by which access might be had from the wa- 
ters of the upper Platte to those of the Pacific Slope. 
South Pass, as this passage through the hills soon 
came to be called, was the gateway to Oregon. As 
yet the United States had not an inch of uncontested 
soil upon the Pacific, but in years to come a whole 
civilization was to pour over the upper trail to people 
the valley of the Columbia and claim it for new states. 
The Santa Fe trail was chiefly the route of commerce. 
The Oregon trail became the pathway of a people 
westward bound. 

In its earliest years the Oregon trail knew only the 
fur traders, those nameless pioneers who possessed 
an accurate rule-of -thumb knowledge of every hill 
and valley of the mountains nearly a generation be- 
fore the surveyor and his transit brought them within 
the circle of recorded facts. The historian of the 
fur trade, Major Hiram Martin Chittenden, has 
tracked out many of them with the same laborious 

70 



THE OREGON TRAIL 71 

industry that carried them after the beaver and the 
other marketable furs. When they first appeared is 
lost in tradition. That they were everywhere in 
the period between the journey of Lewis and Clark, 
in 1805, and the rise of Independence as an outfitting 
post, in 1832, is clearly manifest. That they dis- 
covered every important geographic fact of the West 
is quite as certain as it is that their discoveries were 
often barren, were generally unrecorded in a formal 
way, and exercised little influence upon subsequent 
settlement and discovery. Their place in history is 
similar to that of those equally nameless ship captains 
of the thirteenth century who knew and charted the 
shore of the Mediterranean at a time when scientific 
geographers were yet living on a flat earth and shap- 
ing cosmographies from the Old Testament. Al- 
though the fur-traders, with their great companies 
behind them, did less to direct the future than their 
knowledge of geography might have warranted, they 
managed to secure a foothold upon the Pacific coast 
early in the century. Astoria, in 1811, was only a 
pawn in the game between the British and American 
organizations, whose control over Oregon was so 
confusing that Great Britain and the United States, 
in 1818, gave up the task of drawing a boundary 
when they reached the Rockies, and allowed the coun- 
try beyond to remain under joint occupation. 

In the thirties, religious enthusiasm was added to 
the profits of the fur trade as an inducement to visit 
Oregon. By 1832 the trading prospects had incited 



72 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

migration outside the regular companies. Nathaniel 
J. Wyeth took out his first party in this year. He 
repeated the journey with a second party in 1834. 
The Methodist church sent a body of missionaries 
to convert the western Indians in this latter year. 
The American Board of Foreign Missions sent out 
the redoubtable Marcus Whitman in 1835. Before 
the thirties were over Oregon had become a house- 
hold word through the combined reports of traders 
and missionaries. Its fertility and climate were 
common themes in the lyceums and on the lecture 
platform; while the fact that this garden might 
through prompt migration be wrested from the 
British gave an added inducement. Joint occupa- 
tion was yet the rule, but the time was approaching 
when the treaty of 1818 might be denounced, a time 
when Oregon ought to become the admitted property 
of the United States. The thirties ended with no 
large migration begun. But the financial crisis of 
1837, which unsettled the frontier around the Great 
Lakes, provided an impoverished and restless popu- 
lation ready to try the chance in the farthest West. 
A growing public interest in Oregon roused the 
United States government to action in the early 
forties. The Indians of the Northwest were in need 
of an agent and sound advice. The exact location 
of the trail, though the trail itself was fairly well 
known, had not been ascertained. Into the hands 
of the senators from Missouri fell the task of inspir- 
ing the action and directing the result. Senator 



THE OREGON TRAIL 73 

Linn was the father of bills and resolutions looking 
towards a territory west of the mountains; while 
Benton, patron of the fur trade, received for his new 
son-in-law, John C. Fremont, a detail in command 
of an exploring party to the South Pass. 

The career of Fremont, the Pathfinder, covers 
twenty years of great publicity, beginning with his 
first command in 1842. On June 10, of this year, 
with some twenty-one guides and men, he departed 
from Cyprian Chouteau's place on the Kansas, ten 
miles above its mouth. He shortly left the Kansas, 
crossed country to Grand Island in the Platte, and 
followed the Platte and its south branch to St.Vrain's 
Fort in northern Colorado, where he arrived in thirty 
days. From St.Vrain's he skirted the foothills north 
to Fort Laramie. Thence, ascending the Sweet- 
water, he reached his destination at South Pass on 
August 8, just one day previous to the signing of the 
great English treaty at Washington. At South Pass 
his journey of observation was substantially over. 
He continued, however, for a few days along the 
Wind River Range, climbing a mountain peak and 
naming it for himself. By October he was back in 
St. Louis with his party. 

In the spring of 1843, Fremont started upon a 
second and more extended governmental exploration 
to the Rockies. This time he followed a trail along 
the Kansas River and its Republican branch to St. 
Vrain's, whence he made a detour south to Boiling 
Spring and Bent's trading-post on the Arkansas River. 



74 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Mules were scarce, and Colonel Bent was relied upon 
for a supply. Returning to the Platte, he divided 
his company, sending part of it over his course of 
1842 to Laramie and South Pass, while he led his 
own detachment directly from St. Vrain's into the 
Medicine Bow Range, and across North Park, where 
rises the North Platte. Before reaching Fort Hall, 
where he was to reunite his party, he made another 
detour to Great Salt Lake, that he might feel like 
Balboa as he looked upon the inland sea. From Fort 
Hall, which he reached on September 18, he followed 
the emigrant route by the valley of the Snake to the 
Dalles of the Columbia. 

Whether the ocean could be reached by any river 
between the Columbia and Colorado was a matter of 
much interest to persons concerned with the control 
of the Pacific. The facts, well enough known to the 
trappers, had not yet received scientific record when 
Fremont started south from the Dalles in November, 
1843, to ascertain them. His march across the Ne- 
vada desert was made in the dead of winter under 
difficulties that would have brought a less resolute 
explorer to a stop. It ended in March, 1844, at 
Sutter's ranch in the Sacramento Valley, with half 
his horses left upon the road. His homeward march 
carried him into southern California and around the 
sources of the Colorado, proving by recorded obser- 
vation the difficult character of the country between 
the mountains and the Pacific. 

In following years the Pathfinder revisited the 



THE OREGON TRAIL 75 

scenes of these two expeditions upon which his repu- 
tation is chiefly based. A man of resolution and mod- 
erate abihty, the glory attendant upon his work turned 
his head. His later failures in the face of military 
problems far beyond his comprehension tended to 
belittle the significance of his earlier career, but his- 
tory may well agree with the eminent English travel- 
ler, Burton, who admits that : ^' Every foot of ground 
passed over by Colonel Fremont was perfectly well 
known to the old trappers and traders, as the in- 
terior of Africa to the Arab and Portuguese pom- 
beiros. But this fact takes nothing away from the 
honors of the man who first surveyed and scientifi- 
cally observed the country." Through these two 
journeys the Pacific West rose in clear definition 
above the American intellectual horizon. '^The 
American Eagle,'' quoth the Platte (Missouri) Eagle 
in 1843, "is flapping his wings, the precurser [sic] 
of the end of the British lion, on the shores of the 
Pacific. Destiny has willed it." 

The year in which Fremont made his first expedi- 
tion to the mountains was also the year of the first 
formal, conducted emigration to Oregon. Mission- 
aries beyond the mountains had urged upon Congress 
the appointment of an American representative and 
magistrate for the country, with such effect that 
Dr. Elijah White, who had some acquaintance with 
Oregon, was sent out as sub-Indian agent in the 
spring of 1842. With him began the regular mi- 
gration of homeseekers that peopled Oregon during 



76 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the next ten years. His emigration was not large, 
perhaps eighteen Pennsylvania wagons and 130 per- 
sons; but it seems to have been larger than he ex- 
pected, and large enough to raise doubt as to the 
practicability of taking so many persons across the 
plains at once. In the decade following, every May, 
when pasturage was fresh and green, saw pioneers 
gathering, with or without premeditation, at the 
bend of the Missouri, bound for Oregon. Indepen- 
dence and its neighbor villages continued to be the 
posts of outfit. How many in the aggregate crossed 
the plains can never be determined, in spite of the 
efforts of the pioneer societies of Oregon to record 
their names. The distinguishing feature of the 
emigration was its spontaneous individualistic char- 
acter. Small parties, too late for the caravan, fre- 
quently set forth alone. Single families tried it 
often enough to have their wanderings recorded in 
the border papers. In the spring following the cross- 
ing of Elijah White emigrants gathered by hundreds 
at the Missouri ferries, until an estimate of a thou- 
sand in all is probably not too high. In 1844 the 
tide subsided a little, but in 1845 it established a 
new mark in the vicinity of three thousand, and in 
1847 ran between four and five thousand. These 
were the highest figures, yet throughout the decade 
the current flowed unceasingly. 

The migration of 1843, the earliest of the fat years, 
may be taken as typical of the Oregon movement. 
Early in the year faces turned toward the Missouri 



THE OREGON TRAIL 77 

rendezvous. Men, women, and children, old and 
young, with wagons and cattle, household equipment, 
primitive sawmills, and all the impedimenta of civil- 
ization were to be found in the hopeful crowd. For 
some days after departure the unwieldy party, a 
thousand strong, with twice as many cattle and 
beasts of burden, held together under Burnett, their 
chosen captain. But dissension beyond his control 
soon split the company. In addition to the general 
fear that the number was dangerously high, the poorer 
emigrants were jealous of the rich. Some of the latter 
had in their equipment cattle and horses by the score, 
and as the poor man guarded these from the Indian 
thieves during his long night watches he felt the 
injustice which compelled him to protect the prop- 
erty of another. Hence the party broke early in 
June. A '^cow column'^ was formed of those who 
had many cattle and heavy belongings; the lighter 
body went on ahead, though keeping within support- 
ing distance; and under two captains the procession 
moved on. The way was tedious rather than diffi- 
cult, but habit soon developed in the trains a life 
that was full and complete. Oregon, one of the 
migrants of 1842 had written, was a ''great country 
for unmarried gals." Courtship and marriage be- 
gan almost before the States were out of sight. 
Death and burial, crime and punishment, filled out 
the round of human experience, while Dr. Whitman 
was more than once called upon in his professional 
capacity to aid in the enlargement of the band. 



78 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The trail to Oregon was the longest road yet de- 
veloped in the United States. It started from the 
Missouri River anywhere between Independence and 
Council Bluffs. In the beginning, Independence 
was the common rendezvous, but as the agricultural 
frontier advanced through Iowa in the forties nu- 
merous new crossings and ferries were made further 
up the stream. From the various ferries the start 
began, as did the Santa Fe trade, sometime in May. 
By many roads the wagons moved westward towards 
the point from which the single trail extended to the 
mountains. East of Grand Island, where the Platte 
River reaches its most southerly point, these routes 
from the border were nearly as numerous as the cara- 
vans, but here began the single highway along the 
river valley, on its southern side. At this point, 
in the years immediately after the Mexican War, the 
United States founded a military post to protect 
the emigrants, naming it for General Stephen W. 
Kearny, commander of the Army of the West. From 
Fort Kearney (custom soon changed the spelling 
of the name) to the fur-trading post at Laramie 
Creek the trail followed the river and its north fork. 
Fort Laramie itself was bought from the fur company 
and converted into a military post which became 
a second great stopping-place for the emigrants. 
Shortly west of Laramie, the Sweetwater guided the 
trail to South Pass, where, through a gap twenty 
miles in width, the main commerce between the 
Mississippi Valley and the Pacific was forced to go. 



THE OREGON TRAIL 79 

Beyond South Pass, Wyeth's old Fort Hall was the 
next post of importance on the road. From Fort 
Hall to Fort Boise the trail continued down the 
Snake, cutting across the great bend of the river to 
meet the Columbia near Walla Walla. 

The journey to Oregon took about five months. 
Its deliberate, domesticated progress was as differ- 
ent as might be from the commercial rush to Santa 
Fe. Starting too late, the emigrant might easily 
get caught in the early mountain winter, but with 
a prompt start and a wise guide, or pilot, winter 
always found the homeseeker in his promised land. 
*'This is the right manner to settle the Oregon 
question,'' wrote Niles, after he had counted over 
the emigrants of 1844. 

Before the great migration of 1843 reached Ore- 
gon the pioneers already there had taken the law to 
themselves and organized a provisional government 
in the Willamette Valley. The situation here, un- 
der the terms of the joint occupation treaty, was 
one of considerable uncertainty. National interests 
prompted settlers to hope and work for future con- 
trol by one country or the other, while advantage 
seemed to incline to the side of Dr. McLoughlin, the 
generous factor of the British fur companies. But 
the aggressive Americans of the early migrations were 
restive under British leadership. They were fear- 
ful also lest future American emigration might carry 
political control out of their hands into the manage- 
ment of newcomers. Death and inheritance among 



80 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

their number had pointed to a need for civil institu- 
tions. In May, 1843, with all the ease invariably 
shown by men of Anglo-Saxon blood when isolated 
together in the wilderness, they formed a voluntary 
association for government and adopted a code of 
laws. 

Self-confidence, the common asset of the West, 
was not absent in this newest American community. 
^^A few months since," wrote Elijah White, ^^at our 
Oregon lyceum, it was unanimously voted that the 
colony of Wallamette held out the most flattering 
encouragement to immigrants of any colony on the 
globe." In his same report to the Commissioner of 
Indian Affairs, the sub-Indian agent described the 
course of events. ' ^ During my up-country excursion, 
the whites of the colony convened, and formed a code 
of laws to regulate intercourse between themselves 
during the absence of law from our mother country, 
adopting in almost all respects the Iowa code. In this 
I was consulted, and encouraged the measure, as it 
was so manifestly necessary for the collection of 
debts, securing rights in claims, and the regulation of 
general intercourse among the whites." 

A messenger was immediately sent east to beg Con- 
gress for the extension of United States laws and juris- 
diction over the territory. His journey was six 
months later than the winter ride of Marcus Whit- 
man, who went to Boston to save the missions of the 
American Board from abandonment, and might with 
better justice than Whitman's be called the ride to 



THE OREGON TRAIL 81 

save Oregon. But Oregon was in no danger of being 
lost, however dilatory Congress might be. The little 
illegitimate government settled down to work, its 
legislative committee enacted whatever laws were 
needed for local regulation, and a high degree of law 
and order prevailed. 

Sometimes the action of the Americans must have 
been meddlesome and annoying to the English and 
Canadian trappers. In the free manners of the first 
half of the nineteenth century the use of strong 
drink was common throughout the country and uni- 
versal along the frontier. ^' A family could get along 
very well without butter, wheat bread, sugar, or tea, 
but whiskey was as indispensable to housekeeping 
as corn-meal, bacon, coffee, tobacco, and molasses. 
It was always present at the house raising, harvest- 
ing, road working, shooting matches, corn husking, 
weddings, and dances. It was never out of order 
^ where two or three were gathered together.'" Yet 
along with this frequent intemperance, a violent 
abstinence movement was gaining way. Many of 
the Oregon pioneers came from Iowa and the new 
Northwest, full of the new crusade and ready to 
support it. Despite the lack of legal right, though 
with every moral justification, attempts were made to 
crush the liquor traffic with the Indians. White tells 
of a mass meeting authorizing him to take action on 
his own responsibility; of his enlisting a band of 
coadjutors; and, finally, of finding 'Hhe distillery in 
a deep, dense thicket, 11 miles from town, at 3 o'clock 

G 



82 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

P.M. The boiler was a large size potash kettle, and 
all the apparatus well accorded. Two hogsheads and 
eight barrels of slush or beer were standing ready for 
distillation, with part of one barrel of molasses. No 
liquor was to be found, nor as yet had much been dis- 
tilled. Having resolved on my course, I left no time 
for reflection, but at once upset the nearest cask, 
when my noble volunteers immediately seconded 
my measures, making a river of beer in a moment; 
nor did we stop till the kettle was raised, and ele- 
vated in triumph at the prow of our boat, and every 
cask, with all the distilling apparatus, was broken to 
pieces and utterly destroyed. We then returned, 
in high cheer, to the town, where our presence and 
report gave general joy.'^ 

The provisional government lasted for several 
years, with a fair degree of respect shown to it by its 
citizens. Like other provisional governments, it 
was weakest when revenue was in question, but its 
courts of justice met and satisfied a real need of the 
settlers. It was long after regular settlement began 
before Congress acquired sure title to the country 
and could pass laws for it. 

The Oregon question, muttering in the thirties, 
thus broke out loudly in the forties. Emigrants then 
rushed west in the great migrations with deliberate 
purpose to have and to hold. Once there, they de- 
manded, with absolute confidence, that Congress 
protect them in their new homes. The stories of the 
election of 1844, the Oregon treaty of 1846, and the 



THE OREGON TRAIL 83 

erection of a territorial government in 1848 would all 
belong to an intimate study of the Oregon trail. 

In the election of 1844 Oregon became an impor- 
tant question in practical politics. Well-informed 
historians no longer believe that the annexation of 
Texas was the result of nothing but a deep-laid plot of 
slaveholders to acquire more lands for slave states 
and more southern senators. All along the frontier, 
whether in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa, or in Ar- 
kansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, population was 
restive under hard times and its own congenital in- 
stinct to move west to cheaper lands. Speculation 
of the thirties had loaded up the eastern states with 
debts and taxes, from which the states could not es- 
cape with honor, but from under which their indi- 
vidual citizens could emigrate. Wherever farm 
lands were known, there went the home-seekers, and 
it needs no conspiracy explanation to account for the 
presence, in the platform, of a party that appealed to 
the great plain people, of planks for the reannexation 
of Texas and the whole of Oregon. With a Demo- 
cratic party strongest in the South, the former ex- 
tension was closer to the heart, but the whole West 
could subscribe to both. 

Oregon included the whole domain west of the 
Rockies, between Spanish Mexico at 42° and Russian 
America, later known as Alaska, at 54° 40'. Its 
northern and southern boundaries were clearly es- 
tablished in British and Spanish treaties. Its east- 
ern limit by the old treaty of 1818 was the conti- 



84 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

nental divide, since the United States and Great 
Britain were unable either to allot or apportion it. 
Title which should justify a claim to it was so equally 
divided between the contesting countries that it would 
be difficult to make out a positive claim for either, 
while in fact a compromise based upon equal division 
was entirely fair. But the West wanted all of Ore- 
gon with an eagerness that saw no flaw in the United 
States title. That the democratic party was sincere 
in asking for all of it in its platform is clearer with 
respect to the rank and file of the organization than 
with the leaders of the party. Certain it is that just 
so soon as the execution of the Texas pledge provoked 
a war with Mexico, President Polk, himself both a 
westerner and a frontiersman, was ready to eat his 
words and agree with his British adversary quickly. 
Congress desired, after Polk's election in 1844, to 
serve a year's notice on Great Britain and bring joint 
occupation to an end. But more pacific advices 
prevailed in the mouth of James Buchanan, Secretary 
of State, so that the United States agreed to accept 
an equitable division instead of the whole or none. 
The Senate, consulted in advance upon the change of 
policy, gave its approval both before and after to the 
treaty which, signed June 15, 1846, extended the 
boundary line of 49° from the Rockies to the Pacific. 
The settled half of Oregon and the greater part of 
the Columbia River thus became American terri- 
tory, subject to such legislation as Congress should 
prescribe. 



THE OREGON TRAIL 85 

A territory of Oregon, by law of 1848, was the re- 
sult of the establishment of the first clear American 
title on the Pacific. All that the United States had 
secured in the division was given the popular name. 
Missionary activity and the fur trade, and, above all, 
popular agricultural conquest, had established the 
first detached American colony, with the desert 
separating it from the mother country. The trail 
was already well known to thousands, and so clearly 
defined by wheel ruts and debris along the sides 
that even the blind could scarce wander from the 
beaten path. A temporary government, sufficient 
for the immediate needs of the inhabitants, had at 
once paved the way for the legitimate territory and 
revealed the high degree of law and morality prevail- 
ing in the population. Already the older settlers 
were prosperous, and the first chapter in the history 
of Oregon was over. A second great trail had still 
further weakened the hold of the American desert 
over the American mind, endangering, too, the 
Indian policy that was dependent upon the desert 
for its continuance. 



CHAPTER VI 

OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 

The story of the settlement and winning of Ore- 
gon is but a small portion of the whole history of the 
Oregon trail. The trail was not only the road to 
Oregon, but it was the chief road across the continent. 
Santa Fe dominated a southern route that was im- 
portant in commerce and conquest, and that could 
be extended west to the Pacific. But the deep ra- 
vine of the Colorado River splits the United States 
into sections with little chance of intercourse below 
the fortieth parallel. To-day, in only two places 
south of Colorado do railroads bridge it; only 
one stage route of importance ever crossed it. The 
southern trail could not be compared in its traffic or 
significance with the great middle highway by South 
Pass which led by easy grades from the Missouri 
River and the Platte, not only to Oregon but to 
California and Great Salt Lake. 

Of the waves of influence that drew population 
along the trail, the Oregon fever came first ; but while 
it was still raging, there came the Mormon trek that 
is without any parallel in American history. Through- 
out the lifetime of the trails the American desert 
extended almost unbroken from the bend of the 

86 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 87 

Missouri to California and Oregon. The Mormon 
settlement in Utah became at once the most con- 
siderable colony within this area, and by its own 
fertility emphasized the barren nature of the rest. 

Of the Mormons, Joseph Smith was the prophet, 
but it would be fair to ascribe the parentage of the 
sect to that emotional upheaval of the twenties and 
thirties which broke down barriers of caste and 
politics, ruptured many of the ordinary Christian 
churches, and produced new revelations and new 
prophets by the score. Joseph Smith was merely 
one of these, more astute perhaps than the others, 
having much of the wisdom of leadership, as Mo- 
hammed had had before him, and able to direct and 
hold together the enthusiasm that any prophet 
might have been able to arouse. History teaches 
that it is easy to provoke religious enthusiasm, 
however improbable or fraudulent the guides or 
revelations may be; but that the founding of a 
church upon it is a task for greatest statesmanship. 

The discovery of the golden plates and the magic 
spectacles, and the building upon them of a mili- 
tant church has little part in the conquest of the 
frontier save as a motive force. It is difficult for 
the gentile mind to treat the Book of Mormon other 
than as a joke, and its perpetrator as a successful 
charlatan. Mormon apologists and their enemies 
have gone over the details of its production without 
establishing much sure evidence on either side. The 
theological teaching of the church seems to put less 



88 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

stress upon it than its supposed miraculous origin 
would dictate. It is, wrote Mark Twain, with his 
light-hearted penetration, ^^ rather stupid and tire- 
some to read, but there is nothing vicious in its 
teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable — 
it is 'smouched' from the New Testament and no 
credit given.'' Converts came slowly to the new 
prophet at the start, for he was but one of many- 
teachers crying in the wilderness, and those who had 
known him best in his youth were least ready to see 
in him a custodian of divinity. Yet by the spring 
of 1830 it was possible to organize, in western New 
York, the body which Rigdon was later to christen 
the ^^ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." 
By the spring of 1831 headquarters had moved to 
Kirtland, Ohio, where proselyting had proved to be 
successful in both religion and finance. 

Kirtland was but a temporary abode for the new 
sect. Revelations came in upon the prophet rapidly, 
pointing out the details of organization and adminis- 
tration, the duty of missionary activity among the 
Indians and gentiles, and the future home further 
to the west. Scouts were sent to the Indian Country 
at an early date, leaving behind at Kirtland the 
leaders to build their temple and gather in the con- 
verts who, by 1833 and 1834, had begun to appear in 
hopeful numbers. The frontier of this decade was 
equally willing to speculate in religion, agriculture, 
banking, or railways, while Smith and his intimates 
possessed the germ of leadership to take advantage 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 89 

of every chance. Until the panic of 1837 they flour- 
ished, apparently not always beyond reproach in 
financial affairs, but with few neighbors who had 
the right to throw the stone. Antagonism, already 
appearing against the church, was due partly to an 
essential intolerance among their frontier neighbors 
and partly to the whole-souled union between church 
and life which distinguished the Mormons from the 
other sects. Their political complexion was iden- 
tical with their religion, — a combination which 
always has aroused resentment in America. 

For a western home, the leaders fell upon a tract 
in Missouri, not far from Independence, close to 
the Indians whose conversion was a part of the Mor- 
mon duty. In the years when Oregon and Santa 
Fe were by-words along the Missouri, the Mormons 
were getting a precarious foothold near the commence- 
ment of the trails. The population around Inde- 
pendence was distinctly inhospitable, with the result 
that petty violence appeared, in which it is hard to 
place the blame. There was a calm assurance among 
the Saints that they and they alone were to inherit 
the earth. Their neighbors maintained that poultry 
and stock were unsafe in their vicinity because of 
this belief. The Mormons retaliated with charges 
of well-spoiling, incendiarism, and violence. In all 
the bickerings the sources of information are partisan 
and cloudy with prejudice, so that it is easier to see 
the disgraceful scuffle than to find the culprit. From 
the south side of the Missouri around Independence 



90 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the Saints were finally driven across the river by 
armed mobs ; a transaction in which the Missourians 
spoke of a sheriff's posse and maintaining the peace. 
North of the river the unsettled frontier was reached 
in a few miles, and there at Far West, in Caldwell 
County, they settled down at last, to build their 
tabernacle and found their Zion. In the summer of 
1838 their corner-stone was laid. 

Far West remained their goal in belief longer than 
in fact. Before 1838 ended they had been forced to 
agree to leave Missouri; yet they returned in secret 
to relay the corner-stone of the tabernacle and con- 
tinued to dream of this as their future home. Up to 
the time of their expulsion from Missouri in 1838 
they are not proved to have been guilty of any crime 
that could extenuate the gross intolerance which 
turned them out. As individuals they could live 
among Gentiles in peace. It seems to have been the 
collective soul of the church that was unbearable to 
the frontiersmen. The same intolerance which had 
facilitated their departure from Ohio and compelled 
it from Missouri, in a few more years drove them 
again on their migrations. The cohesion of the 
church in politics, economics, and religion explains 
the opposition which it cannot well excuse. 

In Hancock County, Illinois, not far from the old 
Fort Madison ferry which led into the half-breed 
country of Iowa, the Mormons discovered a village 
of Commerce, once founded by a communistic set- 
tlement from which the business genius of Smith 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 91 

now purchased it on easy terms. It was occupied in 
1839, renamed Nauvoo in 1840, and in it a new taber- 
nacle was begun in 1841 . From the poverty-stricken 
young clairvoyant of fifteen years before, the prophet 
had now developed into a successful man of affairs, 
with ambitions that reached even to the presidency 
at Washington. With a strong sect behind him, 
money at his disposal, and supernatural powers in 
which all faithful saints believed, Joseph could go 
far. Nauvoo had a population of about fifteen 
thousand by the end of 1840. 

Coming into Illinois upon the eve of a closely 
contested presidential election, at a time when the 
state feared to lose its population in an emigration 
to avoid taxation, and with a vote that was certain to 
be cast for one candidate or another as a unit, the 
Mormons insured for themselves a hearty welcome 
from both Democrats and Whigs. A complaisant 
legislature gave to the new Zion a charter full of 
privilege in the making and enforcing of laws, so 
that the ideal of the Mormons of a state within the 
state was fully realized. The town council was 
emancipated from state control, its courts were inde- 
pendent, and its militia was substantially at the beck 
of Smith. Proselyting and good management built 
up the town rapidly. To an importunate creditor 
Smith described it as a '^deathly sickly hole," but 
to the possible convert it was advertised as a land of 
milk and honey. Here it began to be noticed that 
desertions from the church were not uncommon; that 



92 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

conversion alone kept full and swelled its ranks. 
It was noised about that the wealthy convert had 
the warmest reception, but was led on to let his 
religious passion work his impoverishment for the 
good of the cause. 

Here in Nauvoo it was that the leaders of the 
church took the decisive step that carried Mormon- 
ism beyond the pale of the ordinary, tolerable, reli- 
gious sects. Rumors of immorality circulated 
among the Gentile neighbors. It was bad enough, 
they thought, to have the Mormons chronic petty 
thieves, but the license that was believed to prevail 
among the leaders was more than could be endured 
by a community that did not count this form of in- 
iquity among its own excesses. The Mormons were 
in general of the same stamp as their fellow frontiers- 
men until they took to this. At the time, all im- 
morality was denounced and denied by the prophet 
and his friends, but in later years the church made 
public a revelation concerning celestial or plural 
marriage, with the admission that Joseph Smith had 
received it in the summer of 1843. Never does 
Mormon polygamy seem to have been as prevalent 
as its enemies have charged. But no church coun- 
tenancing the practice could hope to be endured by 
an American community. The odium of practising it 
was increased by the hypocrisy which denied it. It 
was only a matter of time until the Mormons should 
resume their march. 

The end of Mormon rule at Nauvoo was precipi- 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 93 

tated by the murder of Joseph Smith, and Hyrum 
his brother, by a mob at Carthage jail in the summer 
of 1844. Growing intolerance had provoked an 
attack upon the Saints similar to that in Missouri. 
Under promise of protection the Smiths had sur- 
rendered themselves. Their martyrdom at once 
disgraced the state in which it could be possible, and 
gave to Mormonism in a murdered prophet a mighty 
bond of union. The reins of government fell into 
hands not unworthy of them when Brigham Young 
succeeded Joseph Smith. 

Not until December, 1847, did Brigham become in a 
formal way president of the church, but his authority 
was complete in fact after the death of Joseph. 
A hard-headed Missouri River steamboat captain 
knew him, and has left an estimate of him which 
must be close to truth. He was ''a man of great 
ability. Apparently deficient in education and 
refinement, he was fair and honest in his dealings, 
and seemed extremely liberal in conversation upon 
religious subjects. He impressed La Barge, '^ so 
Chittenden, the biographer of the latter relates, 
''as anything but a religious fanatic or even en- 
thusiast ; but he knew how to make use of the fanati- 
cism of others and direct it to great ends." Shortly 
after the murder of Joseph it became clear that 
Nauvoo must be abandoned, and Brigham began to 
consider an exodus across the plains so familiar 
by hearsay to every one by 1845, to the Rocky 
Mountains beyond the limits of the United States. 



94 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Persecution, for the persecuted can never see two 
sides, had soured the Mormons. The threatened 
eviction came in the autumn of 1845. In 1846 the 
last great trek began. 

The van of the army crossed the Mississippi at 
Nauvoo as early as February, 1846. By the hundred, 
in the spring of the year, the wagons of the perse- 
cuted sect were ferried across the river. Five 
hundred and thirty-nine teams within a single 
week in May is the report of one observer. Property 
which could be commuted into the outfit for the 
march was carefully preserved and used. The 
rest, the tidy houses, the simple furniture, the careful 
farms (for the backbone of the church was its well- 
to-do middle class), were abandoned or sold at forced 
sale to the speculative purchaser. Nauvoo was full 
of real estate vultures hoping to thrive upon the 
Mormon wreckage. Sixteen thousand or more 
abandoned the city and its nearly finished temple 
within the year. 

Across southern Iowa the '^Camp of Israel," as 
Brigham Young liked to call his headquarters, 
advanced by easy stages, as spring and summer al- 
lowed. To-day, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy 
railway follows the Mormon road for many miles, but 
in 1846 the western half of Iowa territory was Indian 
Country, the land of the Chippewa, Ottowa, and 
Potawatomi, who sold out before the year was over, 
but who were in possession at this time. Along the 
line of march camps were built by advance parties 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 95 

to be used in succession by the following thousands. 
The extreme advance hurried on to the Missouri 
River, near Council Bluffs, where as yet no city stood, 
to plant a crop of grain, since manna could not be 
relied upon in this migration. By autumn much of 
the population of Nauvoo had settled down in winter 
quarters not far above the present site of Omaha, 
preserving the orderly life of the society, and en- 
during hardships which the leaders sought to miti- 
gate by gaiety and social gatherings. In the Pota- 
watomi country of Iowa, opposite their winter 
quarters, Kanesville sprang into existence; while all 
the way from Kanesville to Grand Island in the 
Platte Mormon detachments were scattered along the 
roads. The destination was yet in doubt. West- 
ward it surely was, but it is improbable that even 
Brigham knew just where. 

The Indians received the Mormons, persecuted 
and driven westward like themselves, kindly at 
first, but discontent came as the winter residence 
was prolonged. From the country of the Omaha, 
west of the Missouri, it was necessary soon to pro- 
hibit Mormon settlement, but east, in the abandoned 
Potawatomi lands, they were allowed to maintain 
Kanesville and other outfitting stations for several 
years. A permanent residence here was not desired 
even by the Mormons themselves. Spring in 1847 
found them preparing to resume the march. 

In April, 1 847, an advance party under the guidance 
of no less a person than Brigham Young started out 



96 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the Platte trail in search of Zion. One hundred and 
forty-three men, seventy-two wagons, one hundred 
and seventy-five horses, and six months' rations, they 
took along, if the figures of one of their historians 
may be accepted. Under strict military order, 
the detachment proceeded to the mountains. It is 
one of the ironies of fate that the Mormons had no 
sooner selected their abode beyond the line of the 
United States in their flight from persecution than 
conquest from Mexico extended the United States 
beyond them to the Pacific. They themselves aided 
in this defeat of their plan, since from among them 
Kearny had recruited in 1846 a battalion for his army 
of invasion. 

Up the Platte, by Fort Laramie, to South Pass and 
beyond, the prospectors followed the well-beaten 
trail. Oregon homeseekers had been cutting it deep 
in the prairie sod for five years. West of South 
Pass they bore southwest to Fort Bridger, and on 
the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham gazed upon the 
waters of the Great Salt Lake. Without serious 
premeditation, so far as is known, and against the 
advice of one of the most experienced of mountain 
guides, this valley by a later-day Dead Sea was chosen 
for the future capital. Fields were staked out, ground 
was broken by initial furrows, irrigation ditches were 
commenced at once, and within a month the town site 
was baptized the City of the Great Salt Lake. 

Behind the advance guard the main body remained 
in winter quarters, making ready for their difficult 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 97 

search for the promised land ; moving at last in the 
late spring in full confidence that a Zion somewhere 
would be prepared for them. The successor of Joseph 
relied but little upon supernatural aid in keeping his 
flock under control. Commonly he depended upon 
human wisdom and executive direction. But upon 
the eve of his own departure from winter quarters 
he had made public, for the direction of the main 
body, a written revelation: ^^The Word and Will of 
the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their 
Journeyings to the West.'' Such revelations as this, 
had they been repeated, might well have created 
or renewed popular confidence in the real inspiration 
of the leader. The order given was such as a wise 
source of inspiration might have formed after con- 
stant intercourse with emigrants and traders upon 
the difficulties of overland migration and the dan- 
gers of the way. 

'^ Let all the people of the Church of Jesus Christ of 
Latter-day Saints, and those who journey with them," 
read the revelation, '^be organized into companies, 
with a covenant and a promise to keep all the 
commandments and statutes of the Lord our God. 
Let the companies be organized with captains of 
hundreds, and captains of fifties, and captains of tens, 
with a president and counsellor at their head, under 
direction of the Twelve Apostles: and this shall be 
our covenant, that we will walk in all the ordinances 
of the Lord. 

''Let each company provide itself with all the 



98 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

teams, wagons, provisions, and all other necessaries 
for the journey that they can. When the companies 
are organized, let them go with all their might, to 
prepare for those who are to tarry. Let each com- 
pany, with their captains and presidents, decide 
how many can go next spring; then choose out a suffi- 
cient number of able-bodied and expert men to take 
teams, seed, and farming utensils to go as pioneers 
to prepare for putting in the spring crops. Let each 
company bear an equal proportion, according to the 
dividend of their property, in taking the poor, the 
widows, and the fatherless, and the families of those 
who have gone with the army, that the cries of the 
widow and the fatherless come not up into the ears 
of the Lord against his people. 

^'Let each company prepare houses and fields 
for raising grain for those who are to remain behind 
this season ; and this is the will of the Lord concern- 
ing this people. 

^^Let every man use all his influence and property 
to remove this people to the place where the Lord 
shall locate a stake of Zion : and if ye do this with 
a pure heart, with all faithfulness, ye shall be blessed 
in your flocks, and in your herds, and in your fields, 
and in your houses, and in your families. ..." 

The rendezvous for the main party was the Elk 
Horn River, whence the head of the procession 
moved late in June and early in July. In careful or- 
ganization, with camps under guard and wagons 
always in corral at night, detachments moved on in 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 99 

quick succession. Kanesville and a large body 
remained behind for another year or longer, but 
before Brigham had laid out his city and started 
east the emigration of 1847 was well upon its way. 
The foremost began to come into the city by Septem- 
ber. By October the new city in the desert had 
nearly four thousand inhabitants. The march had 
been made with little suffering and slight mortality. 
No better pioneer leadership had been seen upon the 
trail. 

The valley of the Great Salt Lake, destined to 
become an oasis in the American desert, supporting 
the only agricultural community existing therein dur- 
ing nearly twenty years, discouraged many of the 
Mormons at the start. In Illinois and Missouri 
they were used to wood and water; here they found 
neither. In a treeless valley they were forced to 
carry their water to their crops in a way in which 
their leader had more confidence than themselves. 
The urgency of Brigham in setting his first detach- 
ment to work on fields and crops was not unwise, 
since for two years there was a real question of food 
to keep the colony alive. Inexperience in irrigating 
agriculture and plagues of crickets kept down the 
early crops. By 1850 the colony was safe, but its 
maintenance does still more credit to its skilful 
leadership. Its people, apart from foreign converts 
who came in later years, were of the stuff that had 
colonized the middle West and won a foothold in 
Oregon; but nowhere did an emigration so nearly 




100 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

create a land which it enjoyed as here. A paternal 
government dictated every effort, outlined the 
streets and farms, detailed parties to explore the 
vicinity and start new centres of life. Little was 
left to chance or unguided enthusiasm. Practical 
success and a high state of general welfare rewarded 
the Saints for their implicit obedience to authority. 
Mormon emigration along the Platte trail became 
as common as that to Oregon in the years following 
1847, but, except in the disastrous hand-cart episode 
of 1856, contains less of novelty than of substantial 
increase to the colony. Even to-day men are living 
in the West, who, walking all the way, with their own 
hands pushed and pulled two-wheeled carts from 
the Missouri to the mountains in the fifties. To bad 
management in handling proselytes the hand-cart 
catastrophe was chiefly due. From the beginning 
missionary activity had been pressed throughout 
the United States and even in Europe. In England 
and Scandinavia the lower classes took kindly to the 
promises, too often impracticable, it must be believed, 
of enthusiasts whose standing at home depended upon 
success abroad. The convert with property could 
pay his way to the Missouri border and join the ordi- 
nary annual procession. But the poor, whose wealth 
was not equal to the moderately costly emigra- 
tion, were a problem until the emigration society 
determined to cut expenses by reducing equipment 
and substituting pushcarts and human power for the 
/^ prairie schooner with its long train of oxen. 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 101 

In 1856 well over one thousand poor emigrants 
left Liverpool, at contract rates, for Iowa City, 
where the parties were to be organized and ample 
equipment in handcarts and provisions were promised 
to be ready. On arrival in Iowa City it was found 
that slovenly management had not built enough of 
the carts. Delayed by the necessary construction 
of these carts, some of the bands could not get on the 
trail until late in the summer, — too late for a suc- 
cessful trip, as a few of their more cautious advisers 
had said. The earliest company got through to 
Salt Lake City in September with considerable suc- 
cess. It was hard and toilsome to push the carts; 
women and children suffered badly, but the task 
was possible. Snow and starvation in the mountains 
broke down the last company. A friendly historian 
speaks of a loss of sixty-seven out of a party of four 
hundred and twenty. Throughout the United States 
the picture of these poor deluded immigrants, toiling 
against their carts through mountain pass and river- 
bottom, with clothing going and food quite gone, in- 
creased the conviction that the Mormon hierarchy 
was misleading and abusing the confidence of thou- 
sands. 

That the hierarchy was endangering the peace of 
the whole United States came to be believed as well. 
In 1850, with the Salt Lake settlement three years old, 
Congress had organized a territory of Utah, extending 
from the Rockies to California, between 37° and 42°, 
and the President had made Brigham Young its 



102 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

governor. The close association of the Mormon 
church and pohtics had prevented peaceful relations 
from existing between its people and the federal 
officers of the territory, while Washington prejudiced 
a situation already difficult by sending to Utah 
officers and judges, some of whom could not have 
commanded respect even where the sway of United 
States authority was complete. The vicious influ- 
ence of politics in territorial appointments, which the 
territories always resented, was specially dangerous 
in the case of a territory already feeling itself perse- 
cuted for conscience' sake. Yet it was not impossi- 
ble for a tactful and respectable federal officer to do 
business in Utah. For several years relations in- 
creased in bad temper, both sides appealing con- 
stantly to President and Congress, until it appeared, 
as was the fact, that the United States authority 
had become as nothing in Utah and with the church. 
Among the earliest of President Buchanan's acts 
was the preparation of an army which should rees- 
tablish United States prestige among the Mormons. 
Large wagon trains were sent out from Fort Leaven- 
worth in the summer of 1857, with an army under 
Albert Sidney Johnston following close behind, and 
again the old Platte trail came before the public eye. 
The Utah war was inglorious. Far from its base, 
and operating in a desert against plainsmen of re- 
markable skill, the army was helpless. At will, the 
Mormon cavalry cut out and burned the supply 
trains, confining their attacks to property rather 



OVERLAND WITH THE MORMONS 103 

than to armed forces. When the army reached 
Fort Bridger, it found Brigham still defiant, his 
people bitter against conquest, and the fort burned. 
With difficulty could the army of invasion have 
lived through the winter without aid. In the spring 
of 1858 a truce was patched up, and the Mormons, 
being invulnerable, were forgiven. The army 
marched down the trail again. 

The Mormon hegira planted the first of the island 
settlements in the heart of the desert. The very 
isolation of Utah gave it prominence. What re- 
ligious enthusiasm lacked in aiding organization, 
shrewd leadership and resulting prosperity supplied. 
The first impulse moving population across the plains 
had been chiefly conquest, with Oregon as the re- 
sult. Religion was the next, producing Utah. The 
lust for gold followed close upon the second, calling 
into life California, and then in a later decade sprin- 
kling little camps over all the mountain West. The 
Mormons would have fared much worse had their 
leader not located his stake of Zion near the point 
where the trail to the Southwest deviated from the 
Oregon road, and where the forty-niners might pay 
tribute to his commercial skill as they passed through 
his oasis on their way to California. 



CHAPTER VII 

CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 

On his second exploring trip, John C. Fremont 
had worked his way south over the Nevada desert 
until at last he crossed the mountains and found 
himself in the valley of the Sacramento. Here in 
1844 a small group of Americans had already been 
established for several years. Mexican California 
was scantily inhabited and was so far from the in- 
efficient central government that the province had 
almost fallen away of its own weight. John A. 
Sutter, a Swiss of American proclivities, was the 
magnate of the Sacramento region, whence he dis- 
pensed a liberal hospitality to the Pathfinder's 
party. 

In 1845, Fremont started on his third trip, this 
time entering California by a southern route and 
finding himself at Sutter's early in 1846. In some 
respects his detachment of engineers had the ap- 
pearance of a filibustering party from the start. 
When it crossed the Rockies, it began to trespass 
upon the territory belonging to Mexico, with whom 
the United States was yet at peace. Whether the 
explorer was actually instructed to detach California 

104 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 105 

from Mexico, or whether he only imagined that such 
action would be approved at home, is likely never 
to be explained. Naval officers on the Pacific were 
already under orders in the event of war to seize 
California at once; and Polk was from the start am- 
bitious to round out the American territory on the 
Southwest. The Americans in the Sacramento were 
at variance with their Mexican neighbors, who re- 
sented the steady influx of foreign blood. Between 
1842 and 1846 their numbers had rapidly increased. 
And in June, 1846, certain of them, professing to 
believe that they were to be attacked, seized the 
Mexican village of Sonoma and broke out the colors 
of what they called their Bear Flag Republic. 
Fremont, near at hand, countenanced and supported 
their act, if he did not suggest it. 

The news of actual war reached the Pacific shortly 
after the American population in California had be- 
gun its little revolution. Fremont was in his glory 
for a time as the responsible head of American 
power in the province. Naval commanders under 
their own orders cooperated along the coast so 
effectively that Kearny, with his army of the West, 
learned that the conquest was substantially com- 
plete, soon after he left Santa Fe, and was able to 
send most of his own force back. California fell 
into American hands almost without a struggle, 
leaving the invaders in possession early in 1847. 
In January of that year the little village of Yerba 
Buena was rebaptized San Francisco, while the 



106 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

American occupants began the sale of lots along the 
water front and the construction of a great seaport. 
The relations of Oregon and California to the 
occupation of the West were much the same in 1847. 
Both had been coveted by the United States. Both 
had now been acquired in fact. Oregon had come 
first because it was most easily reached by the great 
trail, and because it had no considerable body of 
foreign inhabitants to resist invasion. It was, under 
the old agreement for joint occupation, a free field 
for colonization. But California had been the 
territory of Mexico and was occupied by a strange 
population. In the early forties there were from 
4000 to 6000 Mexicans and Spaniards in the prov- 
ince, living the easy agricultural life of the Spanish 
colonist. The missions and the Indians had de- 
cayed during the past generation. The population 
was light hearted and generous. It quarrelled 
loudly, but had the Latin- American knack for 
bloodless revolutions. It was partly Americanized 
by long association with those trappers who had 
visited it since the twenties, and the settlers who had 
begun in the late thirties. But as an occupied 
foreign territory it had not invited American colo- 
nization as Oregon had done. Hence the Oregon 
movement had been going on three or four years be- 
fore any considerable bodies of emigrants broke 
away from the trail, near Salt Lake, and sought out 
homes in California. If war had not come, American 
immigration into California would have progressed 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 107 

after 1846 quite as rapidly as the Mexican authori- 
ties would have allowed. As it was, the actual con- 
quest removed the barrier, so that California mi- 
gration in 1846 and 1847 rivalled that to Oregon 
under the ordinary stimulus of the westward move- 
ment. The settlement of the Mormons at Salt 
Lake developed a much-needed outfitting post at 
the head of the most perilous section of the Cali-j 
fornia trail. Both Mormons and Calif ornians prof-' 
ited by its traffic. 

With respect to California, the treaty which closed 
the Mexican War merely recognized an accomplished 
fact. By right of conquest California had changed 
hands. None can doubt that Mexico here paid 
the penalty under that organic law of politics which 
forbids a nation to sit still when others are moving. 
In no conceivable way could the occupation of Cali- 
fornia have been prevented, and if the war over 
Texas had not come in 1846, a war over California 
must shortly have occurred. By the treaty of 
Guadalupe-Hidalgo Mexico relinquished the territory 
which she had never been able to develop, and made 
way for the erection of the new America on the Pacific. 

Most notable among the ante-bellum pioneers in 
California was John A. Sutter, whose establishment 
on the Sacramento had been a centre of the new 
life. Upon a large grant from the Mexican govern- 
ment he had erected his adobe buildings in the usual 
semi-fortified style that distinguished the isolated 
ranch. He was ready for trade, or agriculture, or 



108 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

war if need be, possessing within his own domain 
equipment for the ordinary simple manufactures and 
suppUes. As his ranch prospered, and as Ameri- 
cans increased in San Francisco and on the Sacra- 
mento, the prospects of Sutter steadily improved. 
In 1847 he made ready to reap an additional share 
of profit from the boom by building a sawmill on his 
estate. Among his men there had been for some 
months a shiftless jack-of-all-trades, James W. 
Marshall, who had been chiefly carpenter while in 
Sutter's employ. In the summer of 1847 Marshall 
was sent out to find a place where timber and water- 
power should be near enough together to make a 
profitable mill site. He found his spot on the south 
bank of the American, which is a tributary of the 
Sacramento, some forty-five miles northeast of 
Sacramento. 

In the autumn of the year Sutter and Marshall 
came to their agreement by which the former was to 
furnish all supplies and the latter was to build the 
mill and operate it on shares. Construction was 
begun before the year ended, and was substantially 
completed in January, 1848. Experience showed 
the amateur constructor that his mill-race was too 
shallow. To remedy this he started the practice of 
turning the river into it by night to wash out earth 
and deepen the channel. Here it was that after one 
of these flushings, toward the end of January, he 
picked up glittering flakes which looked to him like 
gold. 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 109 

With his first find, Marshall hurried off to Sutter, 
at the ranch. Together they tested the flakes in 
the apothecary^s shop, proving the reality of the 
discovery before returning to the mill to prospect 
more fully. 

For Sutter the discovery was a calamity. None 
could tell how large the field might be, but he saw 
clearly that once the news of the find got abroad, the 
whole population would rush madly to the diggings. 
His ranch, the mill, and a new mill which was under 
way, all needed labor. But none would work for 
hire with free gold to be had for the taking. The 
discoverers agreed to keep their secret for six weeks, 
but the news leaked out, carried off all Sutter's hands 
in a few days, and reached even to San Francisco in 
the form of rumor before February was over. A 
new force had appeared to change the balance of 
the West and to excite the whole United States. 

The rush to the gold fields falls naturally into two 
parts: the earlier including the population of Cali- 
fornia, near enough to hear of the find and get to 
the diggings in 1848. The later came from all the 
world, but could not start until the news had per- 
colated by devious and tedious courses to centres 
of population thousands of miles away. The move- 
ment within California started in March and April. 

Further prospecting showed that over large areas 
around the American and Sacramento rivers free 
gold could be obtained by the simple processes of 
placer mining. A wooden cradle operated by six 



110 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

or eight men was the most profitable tool, but a 
tin dishpan would do in an emergency. San Fran- 
cisco was sceptical when the rumor reached it, and 
was not excited even by the first of April, but as 
nuggets and bags of dust appeared in quantity, the 
doubters turned to enthusiasts. Farms were aban- 
doned, town houses were deserted, stores were closed, 
while every able-bodied man tramped off to the 
north to try his luck. The city which had flourished 
and expanded since the beginning of 1847 became 
an empty shell before May was over. Its news- 
paper is mute witness of the desertion, lapsing into 
silence for a month after May 29th because its hands 
had disappeared. Farther south in California the 
news spread as spring advanced, turning by June 
nearly every face toward Sacramento. 

The public authorities took cognizance of the find 
during the summer. It was forced upon them by 
the wholesale desertions of troops who could not 
stand the strain. Both Consul Larkin and Gov- 
ernor Mason, who represented the sovereignty of 
the United States, visited the scenes in person and 
described the situation in their official letters home. 
The former got his news off to the Secretary of State 
by the 1st of June; the latter wrote on August 17; 
together they became the authoritative messengers 
that confirmed the rumors to the world, when Polk 
published some of their documents in his message to 
Congress in December, 1848. The rumors had 
reached the East as early as September, but now, 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 111 

writes Bancroft, 'delirium seized upon the com- 
munity." 

How to get to California became a great popular 
question in the winter of 1848-1849. The public 
mind was well prepared for long migrations through 
the news of Pacific pioneers which had filled the 
journals for at least six years. Route, time, method, 
and cost were all to be considered. Migration, of 
a sort, began at once. 

Land and water offered a choice of ways to Cali- 
fornia. The former route was now closed for the 
winter and could not be used until spring should 
produce her crop of necessary pasturage. But the 
impetuous and the well-to-do could start immedi- 
ately by sea. All along the seaboard enterprising 
ship-owners announced sailings for California, by 
the Horn or by the shorter Isthmian route. Re- 
tired hulks were called again into commission for 
the purpose. Fares were extortionate, but many 
were willing to pay for speed. Before the discovery, 
Congress had arranged for a postal service, via 
Panama, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company 
had been organized to work the contracts. The 
California had left New York in the fall of 1848 
to run on the western end of the route. It had 
sailed without passengers, but, meeting the news 
of gold on the South American coast, had begun to 
load up at Latin ports. When it reached Panama, 
a crowd of clamorous emigrants, many times be- 
yond its capacity, awaited its coming and quarrelled 



112 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

over its accommodations. On February 28, 1849, 
it reached San Francisco at last, starting the influx 
from the world at large. 

The water route was too costly for most of the 
gold-seekers, who were forced to wait for spring, 
when the trails would be open. Various routes then 
guided them, through Mexico and Texas, but most 
of all they crowded once more the great Platte trail. 
Oregon migration and the Mormon flight had 
familiarized this route to all the world. For its first 
stages it was '' already broad and well beaten as any 
turnpike in our country. " 

The usual crowd, which every May for several 
years had brought to the Missouri River crossings 
around Fort Leavenworth, was reenforced in 1849 
and swollen almost beyond recognition. A rifle 
regiment of regulars was there, bound for Forts 
Laramie and Hall to erect new frontier posts. Lieu- 
tenant Stansbury was there, gathering his surveying 
party which was to prospect for a railway route to 
Salt Lake. By thousands and tens of thousands 
others came, tempted by the call of gold. This 
was the cheap and popular route. Every western 
farmer was ready to start, with his own wagons and 
his own stock. The townsman could easily buy the 
simple equipment of the plains. The poor could 
work their way, driving cattle for the better-off. 
Through inexperience and congestion the journey 
was likely to be hard, but any one might undertake 
it. Niles reported in June that up to May 18, 2850 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 113 

wagons had crossed the river at St. Joseph, and 
1500 more at the other ferries. 

FamiUarity had done much to divest the overland 
journey of its terrors. We hear in this, and even in 
earher years, of a sort of plains travel de luxe, of 
wagons '^fitted up so as to be secure from the weather 
and . . . the women knitting and sewing, for all the 
world as if in their ordinary farm-houses. '^ S tans- 
bury, hurrying out in June and overtaking the trains, 
was impressed with the picturesque character of the 
emigrants and their equipment. ^'We have been in 
company with multitudes of emigrants the whole 
day,'' he wrote on June 12. ^' The road has been lined 
to a long extent with their wagons, whose white 
covers, glittering in the sunlight, resembled, at a 
distance, ships upon the ocean. . . . We passed 
also an old Dutchman, with an immense wagon, 
drawn by six yoke of cattle, and loaded with house- 
hold furniture. Behind followed a covered cart 
containing the wife, driving herself, and a host of 
babies — the whole bound to the land of promise, 
of the distance to which, however, they seemed to 
have not the most remote idea. To the tail of the 
cart was attached a large chicken-coop, full of fowls; 
two milch-cows followed, and next came an old mare, 
upon the back of which was perched a little, brown- 
faced, barefooted girl, not more than seven years old, 
while a small sucking colt brought up the rear." 
Travellers eastward bound, meeting the procession, 
reported the hundreds and thousands whom they met. 



114 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The organization of the trains was not unlike that 
of the Oregonians and the Mormons, though gener- 
ally less formal than either of these. The wagons 
were commonly grouped in companies for protection, 
little needed, since the Indians were at peace during 
most of 1849. At nightfall the long columns came 
to rest and worked their wagons into the corral which 
was the typical plains encampment. To form this 
the wagons were ranged in a large circle, each with 
its tongue overlapping the vehicle ahead, and each 
fastened to the next with the brake or yoke chains. 
An opening at one end allowed for driving in the 
stock, which could here be protected from stampede 
or Indian theft. In emergency the circle of wagons 
formed a fortress strong enough to turn aside ordi- 
nary Indian attacks. When the companies had been 
on the road for a few weeks the forming of the corral 
became an easy military manoeuvre. The itinerant 
circus is to-day the thing most like the fleet of 
prairie schooners. 

The emigration of the forty-niners was attended by 
worse sufferings than the trail had yet known. Chol- 
era broke out among the trains at the start. It 
stayed by them, lining the road with nearly five 
thousand graves, until they reached the hills beyond 
Fort Laramie. The price of inexperience, too, had 
to be paid. Wagons broke down and stock died. 
The wreckage along the trail bore witness to this. 
On July 27, Stansbury observed: ^^ To-day we find 
additional and melancholy evidence of the difficulties 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 115 

encountered by those who are ahead of us. Before 
halting at noon, we passed eleven wagons that had 
been broken up, the spokes of the wheels taken to 
make pack-saddles, and the rest burned or otherwise 
destroyed. The road has been literally strewn with 
articles that have been thrown away. Bar-iron and 
steel, large blacksmiths' anvils and bellows, crow- 
bars, drills, augers, gold-washers, chisels, axes, lead, 
trunks, spades, ploughs, large grindstones, baking- 
ovens, cooking-stoves without number, kegs, barrels, 
harness, clothing, bacon, and beans, were found along 
the road in pretty much the order in which they have 
been here enumerated. The carcasses of eight oxen, 
lying in one heap by the roadside, this morning, ex- 
plained a part of the trouble." In twenty-four miles 
he passed seventeen abandoned wagons and twenty- 
geven dead oxen. 

Beyond Fort Hall, with the journey half done, 
came the worst perils. In the dust and heat of the 
Humboldt Valley, stock literally faded away, so that 
thousands had to turn back to refuge at Salt Lake, 
or were forced on foot to struggle with thirst and 
starvation. 

The number of the overland emigrants can never 
be told with accuracy. Perhaps the truest estimate 
is that of the great California historian who counts 
it that, in 1849, 42,000 crossed the continent and 
reached the gold fields. 

It was a mixed multitude that found itself in Cali- 
fornia after July, 1849, when the overland folk began 



116 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

to arrive. All countries and all stations in society 
had contributed to fill the ranks of the 100,000 or 
more whites who were there in the end of the year. 
The farmer, the amateur prospector, and the pro- 
fessional gambler mingled in the crowd. Loose 
women plied their trade without rebuke. Those who 
had come by sea contained an over-share of the un- 
desirable element that proposed to live upon the reck- 
lessness and vices of the miners. The overland emi- 
grants were largely of farmer stock; whether they 
had possessed frontier experience or not before the 
start, the 3000-mile journey toughened and seasoned 
all who reached California. Nearly all possessed 
the essential virtues of strength, boldness, and in- 
itiative. 

The experience of Oregon might point to the fu- 
ture of California when its strenuous population 
arrived upon the unprepared community. The 
Mexican government had been ejected by war. A 
military government erected by the United States 
still held its temporary sway, but felt out of place as 
the controlling power over a civilian American popu- 
lation. The new inhabitants were much in need of 
law, and had the American dislike for military au- 
thority. Immediately Congress was petitioned to 
form a territorial government for the new El Dorado. 
But Congress was preoccupied with the relations of 
slavery and freedom in the Southwest during its 
session of 1848-1849. It adjourned with nothing 
done for California. The mining population was irri- 



CALIFORNIA AND THE FORTY-NINERS 117 

tated but not deeply troubled by this neglect. It 
had already organized its miners' courts and begun 
to execute summary justice in emergencies. It was 
quite able and willing to act upon the suggestion of 
its administrative officers and erect its state govern- 
ment without the consent of Congress. The mili- 
tary governor called the popular convention; the 
constitution framed during September, 1849, was rati- 
fied by popular vote on November 13; a few days 
later Governor Riley surrendered his authority into 
the hands of the elected governor, Burnett, and the 
officials of the new state. All this was done spon- 
taneously and easily. There was no sanction in law 
for California until Congress admitted it in Septem- 
ber, 1850, receiving as one of its first senators, John 
C. Fremont. 

The year 1850 saw the great compromise upon 
slavery in the Southwest, a compromise made neces- 
sary by the appearance on the Pacific of a new Amer- 
ica. The ^'call of the West and the lust for gold'^ 
had done their work in creating a new centre of life 
beyond the quondam desert. 

The census of 1850 revealed something of the 
nature of this population. Probably 125,000 whites, 
though it was difficult to count them and impossible 
to secure absolute accuracy, were found in Oregon 
and California. Nine-tenths of these were in the 
latter colony. More than 11,000 were found in the 
settlements around Great Salt Lake. Not many 
more than 3000 Americans were scattered among 



118 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the Mexican population along the Rio Grande. 
The great trails had seen most of these home-seekers 
marching westward over the desert and across the 
Indian frontier which in the blindness of statecraft 
had been completed for all time in 1840. 



CHAPTER VIII 

KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 

The long line separating the Indian and agri- 
cultural frontiers was in 1850 but little farther west 
than the point which it had reached by 1820. Then 
it had arrived at the bend of the Missouri, where it 
remained for thirty years. Its flanks had swung 
out during this generation, including Arkansas on the 
south and Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin on the 
north, so that now at the close of the Mexican War 
the line was nearly a true meridian crossing the Mis- 
souri at its bend. West of this spot it had been kept 
from going by the tradition of the desert and the 
pressure of the Indian tribes. The country behind 
had filled up with population, Oregon and California 
had appeared across the desert, but the barrier had 
not been pushed away. 

Through the great trails which penetrated the 
desert accurate knowledge of the Far West had begun 
to come. By 1850 the tradition which Pike and Long 
had helped to found had well-nigh disappeared, and 
covetous eyes had been cast upon the Indian 
lands across the border, — lands from which the 
tribes were never to be removed without their con- 

119 



120 



THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 



sent, and which were never to be included in any 
organized territory or state. Most of the traffic 
over the trails and through this country had been in 
defiance of treaty obligations. Some of the tribes 
had granted rights of transit, but such privileges as 
were needed and used by the Oregon, and California, 
and Utah hordes were far in excess of these. Most 
of the emigrants were technically trespassers upon 
Indian lands as well as violators of treaty provisions. 
Trouble with the Indians had begun early in the mi- 
grations. 

At the very beginning of the Oregon movement the 
Indian office had foreseen trouble: ^^ Frequent diffi- 




The West in 1849 

Texas still claimed the Rio Grande as her western boundary. The Southwest 
acquired in 1848 was yet unorganized. 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 121 

culties have occurred during the spring of the last 
and present year [1845] from the passing of emigrants 
for Oregon at various points into the Indian Country. 
Large companies have frequently rendezvoused on 
the Indian lands for months previous to the period 
of their starting. The emigrants have two advan- 
tages in crossing into the Indian Country at an early 
period of the spring; one, the facility of grazing their 
stock on the rushes with which the lands abound; 
and the other, that they cross the Missouri River at 
their leisure. In one instance a large party had to be 
forced by the military to put back. This passing 
of the emigrants through the Indian Country without 
their permission must, I fear, result in an unpleasant 
collision, if not bloodshed. The Indians say that the 
whites have no right to be in their country without 
their consent; and the upper tribes, who subsist on 
game, complain that the buffalo are wantonly killed 
and scared off, which renders their only means of 
subsistence every year more precarious." Fremont 
had seen, in 1842, that this invasion of the Indian 
Country could not be kept up safely without a show 
of military force, and had recommended a post at the 
point where Fort Laramie was finally placed. 

The years of the great migrations steadily aggra- 
vated the relations with the tribes, while the Indian 
agents continually called upon Congress to redress 
or stop the wrongs being done as often by panic- 
stricken emigrants as by vicious ones. ' ^ By alternate 
persuasion and force,'' wrote the Commissioner in 



122 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

1854, ^'some of these tribes have been removed, step 
by step, from mountain to valley, and from river to 
plain, until they have been pushed halfway across 
the continent. They can go no further; on the 
ground they now occupy the crisis must be met, and 
their future determined. . . . [There] they are, and 
as they are, with outstanding obligations in their 
behalf of the most solemn and imperative character, 
voluntarily assumed by the government.'^ But a 
relentless westward movement that had no regard 
for rights of Mexico in either Texas or California 
could not be expected to notice the rights of savages 
even less powerful. It demanded for its own citizens 
rights not inferior to those conceded by the govern- 
ment ^Ho wandering nations of savages.'' A shrewd 
and experienced Indian agent, Fitzpatrick, who had 
the confidence of both races, voiced this demand in 
1853. ^^But one course remains," he wrote, *^ which 
promises any permanent relief to them, or any last- 
ing benefit to the country in which they dwell. That 
is simply to make such modifications in the 'inter- 
course laws ' as will invite the residence of traders 
amongst them, and open the whole Indian territory 
to settlement. In this manner will be introduced 
amongst them those who will set the example of 
developing "the resources of the soil, of which the 
Indians have not now the most distant idea; who 
will afford to them employment in pursuits congenial 
to their nature; and who will accustom them, im- 
perceptibly, to those modes of life which can alone 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 123 

secure them from the miseries of penury. Trade is 
the only civilizer of the Indian. It has been the pre- 
cursor of all civilization heretofore, and it will be of 
all hereafter. . . . The present 'intercourse laws^ 
too, so far as they are calculated to protect the 
Indians from the evils of civilized life — from the 
sale of ardent spirits and the prostitution of morals — 
are nothing more than a dead letter; while, so far 
as they contribute to exclude the benefits of civiliza- 
tion from amongst them, they can be, and are, strictly 
enforced.'' 

In 1849 the Indian Office was transferred by Con- 
gress from the War Department to the Interior, with 
the idea that the Indians would be better off under 
civilian than military control, and shortly after this 
negotiations were begun looking towards new settle- 
ments with the tribes. The Sioux were persuaded 
in the summer of 1851 to make way for increasing 
population in Minnesota, while in the autumn of the 
same year the tribes of the western plains were in- 
duced to make concessions. 

The great treaties signed at the Upper Platte 
agency at Fort Laramie in 1851 were in the interest 
of the migrating thousands. Fitzpatrick had spent 
the summer of 1850 in summoning the bands of Chey- 
enne and Arapaho to the conference. Shoshoni 
were brought in from the West. From the north of 
the Platte came Sioux and Assiniboin, Arickara, 
Grosventres, and Crows. The treaties here con- 
cluded were never ratified in full, but for fifteen years 



124 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Congress paid various annuities provided by them, 
and in general the tribes adhered to them. The right 
of the United States to make roads across the plains 
and to fortify them with military posts was fully 
agreed to, while the Indians pledged themselves to 
commit no depredations upon emigrants. Two 
years later, at Fort Atkinson, Fitzpatrick had a 
conference with the plains Indians of the south, 
Comanche and Apache, making "si renewal of 
faith, which the Indians did not have in the Govern- 
ment, nor the Government in them.'^ 

Overland traffic was made more safe for several 
years by these treaties. Such friction and fighting 
as occurred in the fifties were due chiefly to the ex- 
cesses and the fears of the emigrants themselves. 
But in these treaties there was nothing for the eastern 
tribes along the Iowa and Missouri border, who were 
in constant danger of dispossession by the advance of 
the frontier itself. 

The settlement of Kansas, becoming probable in 
the early fifties, was the impending danger threaten- 
ing the peace of the border. There was not as yet 
any special need to extend colonization across the 
Missouri, since Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Min- 
nesota were but sparsely inhabited. Settlers for 
years might be accommodated farther to the east. 
But the slavery debate of 1850 had revealed and 
aroused passions in both North and South. Mo- 
tives were so thoroughly mixed that participants 
were rarely able to give satisfactory accounts of 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 125 

themselves. Love of struggle, desire for revenge, 
political ambition, all mingled with pure philanthropy 
and a reasonable fear of outside interference with 
domestic institutions. The compromise had settled 
the future of the new lands, but between Missouri 
and the mountains lay the residue of the Louisiana 
purchase, divided truly by the Missouri compromise 
line of 36° 30', but not yet settled. Ambition to 
possess it, to convert it to slavery, or to retain it for 
freedom was stimulated by the debate and the fears 
of outside interference. The nearest part of the 
unorganized West was adjacent to Missouri. Hence 
it was that Kansas came within the public vision first. 
It is possible to trace a movement for territorial 
organization in the Indian Country back to 1850 or 
even earlier. ^Certain of the more intelligent of the 
Indian colonists had been able to read the signs of 
the times, with the result that organized effort for a 
territory of Nebraska had emanated from the Wyan- 
dot country and had besieged Congress between 
1851 and 1853. The obstacles in the road of fulfil- 
ment were the Indians and the laws. Experience 
had long demonstrated the unwisdom of permitting 
Indians and emigrants to live in the same districts. 
The removal and intercourse acts, and the treaties 
based upon them, had guaranteed in particular that 
no territory or state should ever be organized in this 
country. Good faith and the physical presence of 
the tribes had to be overcome before a new territory 
could appear. 



126 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The guarantee of permanency was based upon 
treaty, and in the eye of Congress was not so sacred 
that it could not be modified by treaty. As it be- 
came clear that the demand for the opening of these 
lands would soon have to be granted, Congress pre- 
pared for the inevitable by ordering, in March, 1853, 
a series of negotiations with the tribes west of Mis- 
souri with a view to the cession of more country. 
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, George W. 
Manypenny, who later wrote a book on ^^Our Ind- 
ian Wards," spent the next summer in breaking to 
the Indians the hard news that they were expected 
once more to vacate. He found the tribes uneasy 
and sullen. Occasional prospectors, wandering over 
their lands, had set them thinking. There had been 
no actual white settlement up to October, 1853, so 
Manypenny declared, but the chiefs feared that he 
was contemplating a seizure of their lands. The 
Indian mind had some difficulty in comprehending 
the difference between ceding their land by treaty 
and losing it by force. 

At a long series of council fires the Commissioner 
soothed away some of the apprehensions, but found 
a stubborn resistance when he came to talk of ceding 
all the reserves and moving to new homes. The 
tribes, under pressure, were ready to part with some 
of their lands, but wanted to retain enough to live 
on. When he talked to them of the Great Father 
in Washington, Manypenny himself felt the irony 
of the situation; the guarantee of permanency had 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 127 

been simple and explicit. Yet he arranged for a 
series of treaties in the following year. 

In the spring of 1854 treaties were concluded with 
most of the tribes fronting on Missouri between 37° 
and 42° 40'. Some of these had been persuaded to 
move into the Missouri Valley in the negotiations of 
the thirties. Others, always resident there, had 
accepted curtailed reserves. The Omaha faced the 
Missouri, north of the Platte. South of the Platte 
were the Oto and Missouri, the Sauk and Foxes 
of Missouri, the Iowa, and the Kickapoo. The 
Delaware reserve, north of the Kansas, and around 
Fort Leavenworth, was the seat of Indian civiliza- 
tion of a high order. The Shawnee, immediately 
south of the Kansas, were also well advanced in agri- 
culture in the permanent home they had accepted. 
The confederated Kaskaskia and Peoria, and Wea 
and Piankashaw, and the Miami were further south. 
From those tribes more than thirteen million acres of 
land were bought in the treaties of 1854. In scat- 
tered and reduced reserves the Indians retained for 
themselves about one-tenth of what they ceded. 
Generally, when the final signing came, under the 
persuasion of the Indian Office, and often amid the 
strange surroundings of Washington, the chiefs 
surrendered the lands outright and with no condi- 
tion. 

Certain of the tribes resisted all importunities to 
give title at once and held out for conditions of sale. 
The Iowa, the confederated minor tribes, and 



128 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

notably the Delawares, ceded their lands in trust 
to the United States, with the treaty pledge that the 
lands so yielded should be sold at public auction to 
the highest bidder, the remainders should then be 
offered privately for three years at $1.25 per acre, 
and the final remnants should be disposed of by the 
United States, the accruing funds being held in trust 
by the United States for the Indians. By the end 
of May the treaties were nearly all concluded. In 
July, 1854, Congress provided a land office for the 
territory of Kansas. 

While the Indian negotiations were in progress, 
Senator Douglas was forcing his Kansas-Nebraska 
bill at Washington. The bill had failed in 1853, 
partly because the Senate had felt the sanctity of 
the Indian agreement; but in 1854 the leader of the 
Democratic party carried it along relentlessly. With 
words of highest patriotism upon his lips, as Rhodes 
has told it, he secured the passage of a bill not needed 
by the westward movement, subversive of the na- 
tional pledge, and, blind as he was, destructive as 
well of his party and his own political future. The 
support of President Pierce and the cooperation of 
Jefferson Davis were his in the struggle. It was not 
his intent, he declared, to legislate slavery into or 
out of the territories; he proposed to leave that to 
the people themselves. To this principle he gave the 
name of '^ popular sovereignty,^' ^^and the name was 
a far greater invention than the doctrine." With 
rising opposition all about him, he repealed the Mis- 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 129 

souri compromise which in 1820 had divided the 
Indian Country by the line of 36° 30' into free and 
slave areas, and created within these limits the new 
territories of Kansas and Nebraska. His bill was 
signed by the President on May 30, 1854. In later 
years this day has been observed as a memorial to 
those who lost their lives in fighting the battle which 
he provoked. 

With public sentiment excited, and the Missouri 
compromise repealed, eager partisans prepared in 
the spring of 1854 to colonize the new territories 
in the interests of slavery and freedom. On the 
slavery side. Senator Atchison, of Missouri, was 
to be reckoned as one of the leaders. Young men 
of the South were urged to move, with their slaves 
and their possessions, into the new territories, 
and thus secure these for their cherished institu- 
tion. If votes should fail them in the future, the 
Missouri border was not far removed, and coloni- 
zation of voters might be counted upon. Missouri, 
directly adjacent to Kansas, and a slave state, 
naturally took the lead in this matter of preventing 
the erection of a free state on her western boundary. 
The northern states had been stirred by the act as 
deeply as the South. In New England the bill was 
not yet passed when leaders of the abolition move- 
ment prepared to act under it. One Eli Thayer, 
of Worcester, urged during the spring that friends of 
freedom could do no better work than aid in the 
colonization of Kansas. He secured from his own 



130 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

state, in April, a charter for a Massachusetts Emi- 
grant Aid Society, through which he proposed to aid 
suitable men to move into the debatable land. 
Churches and schools were to be provided for them. 
A stern New England abolition spirit was to be fos- 
tered by them. And they were not to be left without 
the usual border means of defence. Amos A. Law- 
rence, of Boston, a wealthy philanthropist, made 
Thayer's scheme financially possible. Dr. Charles 
Robinson was their choice for leader of emigration 
and local representative in Kansas. 

The resulting settlement of Kansas was stimulated 
little by the ordinary westward impulse but greatly 
by political ambition and sectional rivalry. As 
late as October, 1853, there had been almost no 
whites in the Indian Country. Early in 1854 they 
began to come in, in increasing numbers. The 
Emigrant Aid Society sent its parties at once, before 
the ink was dry on the treaties of cession and before 
land offices had been opened. The approach was 
by the Missouri River steamers to Kansas City and 
Westport, near the bend of the river, where was the 
gateway into Kansas. The Delaware cession, north 
of the Kansas River, was not yet open to legal occu- 
pation, but the Shawnee lands had been ceded com- 
pletely and would soon be ready. So the New Eng- 
land companies worked their way on foot, or in hired 
wagons, up the right bank of the Kansas, hunting 
for eligible sites. About thirty miles west of the 
Missouri line and the old Shawnee mission they 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 131 

picked their spot late in July. The town of Law- 
rence grew out of their cluster of tents and cabins. 

It was more than two months after the arrival of 
the squatters at Lawrence before the first governor 
of the new territory, Andrew H. Reeder, made his 
appearance at Fort Leavenworth and established 
civil government in Kansas. One of his first expe- 
riences was with the attempt of United States officers 
at the post to secure for themselves pieces of the Dela- 
ware lands which surrounded it. ''While lying at 
the fort/' wrote a surveyor who left early in Sep- 
tember to run the Nebraska boundary line, ''we 
heard a great deal about those d — d squatters who 
were trying to steal the Leavenworth site." None 
of the Delaware lands were open to settlement, since 
the United States had pledged itself to sell them all 
at public auction for the Indians' benefit. But 
certain speculators, including officers of the regular 
army, organized a town company to preempt a site 
near the fort, where they thought they foresaw the 
great city of the West. They relied on the immunity 
which usually saved pilferers on the Indian lands, 
and seem even to have used United States soldiers 
to build their shanties. They had begun to dispose 
of their building lots "in this discreditable business" 
four weeks before the first of the Delaware trust 
lands were put on sale. 

However bitter toward each other, the settlers 
were agreed in their attitude toward the Indians, and 
squatted regardless of Indian rights or United States 



132 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

laws. Governor Reeder himself convened his legis- 
lature, first at Pawnee, whence troops from Fort 
Riley ejected it; then at the Shawnee mission, close 
to Kansas City, where his presence and its were 
equally without authority of law. He established 
election precincts in unceded lands, and voting places 
at spots where no white man could go without vio- 
lating the law. The legal snarl into which the 
settlers plunged reveals the inconsistencies in the 
Indian policy. It is even intimated that Governor 
Reeder was interested in a land scheme at Pawnee 
similar to that at Fort Leavenworth. 

The fight for Kansas began immediately after the 
arrival of Governor Reeder and the earliest immi- 
grants. The settlers actually in residence at the 
commencement of 1855 seem to have been about 
8500. Propinquity gave Missouri an advantage at 
the start, when the North was not yet fully aroused. 
At an election for territorial legislature held on 
March 30, 1855, the threat of Senator Atchison was 
revealed in all its fulness when more than 6000 
votes were counted among a population which 
had under 3000 qualified voters. Missouri men 
had ridden over in organized bands to colonize 
the precincts and carry the election. The whole 
area of settlement was within an easy two days' ride 
of the Missouri border. The fraud was so crude that 
Governor Reeder disavowed certain of the results, 
yet the resulting legislature, meeting in July, 1855, 
was able to expel some of its anti-slavery members, 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 133 

while the rest resigned. It adopted the Missouri 
code of law, thus laying the foundations for a slave 
state. 1 ' 

The political struggle over Kansas became more 
intense on the border and more absorbing in the 
nation in the next four years. The free-state men, 
as the settlers around Lawrence came to be known, 
disavowed the first legislature on the ground of its 
fraudulent election, while President Pierce steadily 
supported it from Washington. Governor Reeder 
was removed during its session, seemingly because 
he had thrown doubts upon its validity. Protesting 
against it, the northerners held a series of meetings 
in the autumn, around Lawrence, and Topeka, some 
twenty-five miles further up the Kansas River, and 
crystallized their opposition under Dr. Robinson. 
Their efforts culminated at Topeka in October in a 
spontaneous, but in this instance revolutionary, con- 
vention which framed a free-state constitution for 
Kansas and provided for erecting a rival adminis- 
tration. Dr. Robinson became its governor. 

Before the first legislature under the Topeka 
constitution assembled, Kansas had still further 
trouble. Private violence and mob attacks began 
during the fall of 1855. What is known as the 
Wakarusa War occurred in November, when Sheriff 
Jones of Douglas County tried to arrest some free- 
state men at Lecompton, and met with strong re- 
sistance reenforced with Sharpe rifles from New 
England. Governor Wilson Shannon, who had 



134 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

succeeded Reeder, patched up peace, but hostility 
continued through the winter. Lawrence was in- 
creasingly the centre of northern settlement and the 
object of pro-slave aggression. A Missouri mob 
visited it on May 21, 1856, and in the approving 
presence, it is said, of Sheriff Jones, sacked its hotel 
and printing shop, and burned the residence of Dr. 
Robinson. 

In the fall a free-state crowd marched up the river 
and attacked Lecompton, but within a week of the 
sacking of Lawrence retribution was visited upon the 
pro-slave settlers. In cold blood, five men were 
murdered at a settlement on Potawatomi Creek, by 
a group of fanatical free-state men. Just what 
provocation John Brown and his family had received 
which may excuse his revenge is not certain. In 
many instances individual anti-slavery men retali- 
ated lawlessly upon their enemies. But the leaders 
of the Lawrence party have led also in censuring 
Brown and in disclaiming responsibility for his acts. 
It is certain that in this struggle the free-state party, 
in general, wanted peaceful settlement of the country, 
and were staking their fortunes and families upon it. 
They were ready for defence, but criminal aggres- 
sion was no part of their platform. 

The course of Governor Shannon reached its end 
in the summer of 1856. He was disliked by the free- 
state faction, while his personal habits gave no re- 
spectability to the pro-slave cause. At the end of 
his regime the extra-legal legislature under the To- 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 135 

peka constitution was prevented by federal troops 
from convening in session at Topeka. A few weeks 
later Governor John W. Geary superseded him and 
established his seat of government in Lecompton, 
by this time a village of some twenty houses. It 
took Geary, an honest, well-meaning man, only 
six weeks to fall out with the pro-slave element and 
the federal land officers. He resigned in March, 1857. 
Under Governor Robert J. Walker, who followed 
Geary, the first official attempt at a constitution was 
entered upon. The legislature had already sum- 
moned a convention which sat at Lecompton during 
September and October. Its constitution, which 
was essentially pro-slavery, however it was read, was 
ratified before the end of the year and submitted to 
Congress. But meanwhile the legislature which 
called the convention had fallen into free-state hands, 
disavowed the constitution, and summoned another 
convention. At Leavenworth this convention 
framed a free-state constitution in March, which was 
ratified by popular vote in May, 1858. Governor 
Walker had already resigned in December, 1857. 
Through holding an honest election and purging the 
returns of slave-state frauds he had enabled the free- 
state party to secure the legislature. Southerner 
though he was, he choked at the political dishonesty 
of the administration in Kansas. He had yielded 
to the evidence of his eyes, that the population of 
Kansas possessed a large free-state majority. But 
so yielding he had lost the confidence of Washington. 



136 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Even Senator Douglas, the patron of the popular 
sovereignty doctrine, had now broken with President 
Buchanan, recognizing the right of the people to 
form their own institutions. No attention was ever 
paid by Congress to this Leavenworth constitution, 
but when the Lecompton constitution was finally 
submitted to the people by Congress, in August, 
1858, it was defeated by more than 11,000 votes in a 
total of 13,000. Kansas was henceforth in the hands 
of the actual settlers. A year later, at Wyandotte, 
it made a fourth constitution, under which it at last 
entered the union on January 29, 1861. ^^In the 
Wyandotte Convention," says one of the local his- 
torians, 'Hhere were a few Democrats and one or 
two cranks, and probably both were of some use in 
their way." 

There had been no white population in Kansas in 
1853, and no special desire to create one. But the 
political struggle had advertised the territory on a 
large scale, while the whole West was under the influ- 
ence of the agricultural boom that was extending 
settlement into Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. 
Governor Reeder's census in 1855 found that about 
8500 had come in since the erection of the territory. 
The rioting and fighting, the rumors of Sharpe rifles 
and the stories of Lawrence and Potawatomi, 
instead of frightening settlers away, drew them there 
in increasing thousands. Some few came from the 
South, but the northern majority was overwhelm- 
ing before the panic of 1857 laid its heavy hand 



V 



KANSAS AND THE INDIAN FRONTIER 137 

upon expansion. There was a white population of 
106,390 in 1860. 

The westward movement, under its normal influ- 
ences, had extended the range of prosperous agri- 
cultural settlement into the Northwest in this past 
decade. It had cooperated in the extension into that 
part of the old desert now known as Kansas. But 
chiefly poHtics, and secondly the call of the West, 
is the order of causes which must explain the first 
westward advance of the agricultural frontier since 
1820. Even in 1860 the population of Kansas was 
almost exclusively within a three days' journey of 
the Missouri bend. 



CHAPTER IX 
''pike's peak or bust"* 

The territory of Kansas completed the political 
organization of the prairies. Before 1854 there had 
been a great stretch of land beyond Missouri and 
the Indian frontier without any semblance of organi- 
zation or law. Indeed within the area whites had 
been forbidden to enter, since here was the final 
abode of the Indians. But with the Kansas-Ne- 
braska act all this was changed. In five years a 
series of amorphous territories had been provided for 
by law. 

Along the line of the frontier were now three dis- 
tinct divisions. From the Canadian border to the 
fortieth parallel, Nebraska extended. Kansas lay 
between 40° and 37°. Lying west of Arkansas, the 
old Indian Country, now much reduced by parti- 
tion, embraced the rest. The whole plains country, 
east of the mountains, was covered by these terri- 
torial projects. Indian Territory was without the 
government which its name implied, but popular 
parlance regarded it as the others and refused to 
see any difference among them. 

^ This chapter is in part based upon my article on "The Terri- 
tory of Colorado " which was published in The American Historical 
Review in October, 1906. 

138 



"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST'' 139 

Beyond the mountain wall which formed the 
western boundary of Kansas and Nebraska lay four 
other territories equally without particular reason 
for their shape and bounds. Oregon, acquired in 
1846, had been divided in 1853 by a line starting 
at the mouth of the Columbia and running east to the 
Rockies, cutting off Washington territory on its 
northern side. The Utah territory which figured in 
the compromise of 1850, and which Mormon migra- 
tion had made necessary, extended between Califor- 
nia and the Rockies, from Oregon at 42° to New 
Mexico at 37°. New Mexico, also of the compro- 
mise year, reached from Texas to California, south 
of 37°, and possessed at its northeast corner a pan- 
handle which carried it north to 38° in order to leave 
in it certain old Mexican settlements. 

These divisions of the West embraced in 1854 
the whole of the country between California and the 
states. As yet their boundaries were arbitrary and 
temporary, but they presaged movements of popula- 
tion which during the next quarter century should 
break them up still further and provide real colonies 
in place of the desert and the Indian Country. 
Congress had no formative part in the work. Popu- 
lation broke down barriers and showed the way, 
while laws followed and legalized what had been 
done. The map of 1854 reveals an intent to let the 
mountain summit remain a boundary, and contains 
no prophecy of the four states which were shortly to 
appear. 



140 



THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 



For several decades the area of Kansas territory, 
and the southern part of Nebraska, had been well 
known as the range of the plains Indians, — Pawnee 
and Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne, Kiowa, Co- 
manche and Apache. Through this range the cara- 




,''' NEBRASKA \ tEBB. 1 ^,3coNaW 

""^ TERR. N ^^ 

^.^ V TERR. 

o I ^ 

V I 




^ -r A H 



1 o'*^ ^ 
.- — /»lUNO»s 



TERR. ^.^ 

\ KANSAS TERR. I missoURV 






° V- 

^ > NEW MEXICO TERR. 




INDIAN 
COUNTRY I AHKANS* /• 



C 7s 



E X A S 



The West in 1854 

Great amorphous territories now covered all the plains, and the Rocky 
Mountains were recognized only as a dividing line. 

vans had gone. Here had been constant military 
expeditions as well. It was a common summer's 
campaign for a dragoon regiment to go out from Fort 
Leavenworth to the mountains by either the Arkan- 
sas or Platte route, to skirt the eastern slopes along 
the southern fork of the Platte, and return home 
by the other trail. Those military demonstrations, 



"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 141 

which were believed to be needed to impress the 
tribes, had made this march a regular performance. 
Colonel Dodge had done it in the thirties, Sumner 
and Sedgwick did it in 1857, and there had been nu- 
merous others in between. A well-known trail had 
been worn in this wise from Fort Laramie, on the 
north, through St. Vrain's, crossing the South Platte 
at Cherry Creek, past the Fontaine qui Bouille, and 
on to Bent's Fort and the New Mexican towns. 
Yet Kansas had slight interest in its western end. 
Along the Missouri the sections were quarrelling 
over slavery, but they had scarcely scratched the 
soil for one-fourth of the length of the territory. 

The crest of the continent, lying at the extreme 
west of Kansas, lay between the great trails, so that 
it was off the course of the chief migrations, and 
none visited it for its own sake. The deviating 
trails, which commenced at the Missouri bend, were 
some 250 miles apart at the one hundred and third 
meridian. Here was the land which Kansas baptized 
in 1855 as the county of Arapahoe, and whence arose 
the hills around Pike's Peak, which rumor came in 
three years more to tip with gold. 

The discovery of gold in California prepared the 
public for similar finds in other parts of the West. 
With many of the emigrants prospecting had become 
a habit that sent small bands into the mountain 
valleys from Washington to New Mexico. Stories 
of success in various regions arose repeatedly during 
the fifties and are so reasonable that it is not possible 



142 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

to determine with certainty the first finds in many 
localities. Any mountain stream in the whole 
system might be expected to contain some gold, but 
deposits large enough to justify a boom were slow 
in coming. 

In January, 1859, six quills of gold, brought in to 
Omaha from the mountains, confirmed the rumors 
of a new discovery that had been persistent for sev- 
eral months. The previous summer had seen or- 
ganized attempts to locate in the Pike's Peak region 
the deposits whose existence had been believed in, 
more or less, since 1850. Parties from the gold 
fields of Georgia, from Lawrence, and from Lecomp- 
ton are known to have been in the field and to have 
started various mushroom settlements. El Paso, 
near the present site of Colorado Springs, appeared, 
as well as a group of villages at the confluence of the 
South Platte and the half-dry bottom of Cherry 
Creek, — Montana, Auraria, Highland, and St. 
Charles. Most of the gold-seekers returned to the 
States before winter set in, but a few, encouraged by 
trifling finds, remained to occupy their flimsy cabins 
or to jump the claims of the absentees. In the 
sands of Cherry Creek enough gold was found to hold 
the finders and to start a small migration thither 
in the autumn. In the early winter the groups on 
Cherry Creek coalesced and assumed the name of 
Denver City. 

The news of Pike's Peak gold reached the Missouri 
Valley at the strategic moment when the newness of 



"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 143 

Kansas had worn off, and the depression of 1857 had 
brought bankruptcy to much of the frontier. The 
adventurous pioneers, who were always ready to 
move, had been reenforced by individuals down on 
their luck and reduced to any sort of extremity. 
The way had been prepared for a heavy emigration 
to the new diggings which started in the fall of 1858 
and assumed great volume in the spring of 1859. 

The edge of the border for these emigrants was not 
much farther west than it had been for emigrants of 
the preceding decade. A few miles from the Missouri 
River all traces of Kansas or Nebraska disappeared, 
whether one advanced by the Platte or the Arkansas, 
or by the intermediate routes of the Smoky Hill and 
Republican. The destination was less than half as 
far away as California had been. No mountains and 
no terrible deserts were to be crossed. The costs and 
hardships of the journey were less than any that had 
heretofore separated the frontier from a western goal. 
There is a glimpse of the bustling life around the head 
of the trails in a letter which General W. T. Sherman 
wrote to his brother John from Leavenworth City, 
on April 30, 1859: ^^At this moment we are in 
the midst of a rush to Pike's Peak. Steamboats 
arrive in twos and threes each day, loaded with 
people for the new gold region. The streets are full 
of people buying flour, bacon, and groceries, with 
wagons and outfits, and all around the town are 
little camps preparing to go west. A daily stage 
goes west to Fort Riley, 135 miles, and every morning 



144 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

two spring wagons, drawn by four mules and capable 
of carrying six passengers, start for the Peak, dis- 
tance six hundred miles, the journey to be made in 
twelve days. As yet the stages all go out and don't 
return, according to the plan for distributing the 
carriages ; but as soon as they are distributed, there 
will be two going and two returning, making a good 
line of stages to Pike's Peak. Strange to say, even 
yet, although probably 25,000 people have actually 
gone, we are without authentic advices of gold. Ac- 
counts are generally favorable as to words and de- 
scriptions, but no positive physical evidence comes 
in the shape of gold, and I will be incredulous until I 
know some considerable quantity comes in in way 
of trade." 

Throughout the United States newspapers gave full 
notice to the new boom, while a ^^ Pike's Peak Guide," 
based on a journal kept by one of the early parties, 
found a ready sale. No single movement had ever 
carried so heavy a migration upon the plains as this, 
which in one year must have taken nearly, 100,000 
pioneers to the mountains. ^^ Pike's Peak or Bust!" 
was a common motto blazoned on their wagon 
covers. The sawmill, the press, and the stage-coach 
were all early on the field. Byers, long a great 
editor in Denver, arrived in April to distribute an 
edition of his Rocky Mountain News, which he had 
printed on one side before leaving Omaha. Thence- 
forth the diggings were consistently advertised by a 
resident enthusiast. Early in May the first coach of 



flo m m mm mi 




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urn Loim FOB Bieiomv gityi 

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"Ho FOR THE Yellow Stone" 
:eproduced by permission of the Montana Historical Society, from the original handbill ir 

its possession. 



"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 145 

the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company 
brought Henry Villard into Denver. In June came 
no less a personage than Horace Greeley to see for 
himself the new wonder. ' ' Mine eyes have never yet 
been blessed with the sight of any floor whatever 
in either Denver or Auraria/' he could write of the 
village of huts which he inspected. The seal of 
approval which his letters set upon the enterprise 
did much to encourage it. 

With the rush of prospectors to the hills, nu- 
merous new camps quickly appeared. Thirty 
miles north along the foothills and mesas Boulder 
marked the exit of a mountain creek upon the 
plains. Behind Denver, in Clear Creek Valley, 
were Golden, at the mouth, and Black Hawk and 
Central City upon the north fork of the stream. 
Idaho Springs and Georgetown were on its south 
fork. Here in the Gregory district was the active 
life of the diggings. The great extent of the gold 
belt to the southwest was not yet fully known. 
Farther south was Pueblo, on the Arkansas, and a 
line of little settlements working up the valley, by 
Canyon City to Oro, where Leadville now stands. 

Reaction followed close upon the heels of the 
boom, beginning its work before the last of the out- 
ward bound had reached the diggings. Gold was 
to be found in trifling quantities in many places, 
but the mob of inexperienced miners had little 
chance for fortune. The great deposits, which were 
some months in being discovered, were in refractory 



146 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

quartz lodes, calling for heavy stamp mills, chemical 
processes, and, above all, great capital for their 
working. Even for laborers there was no demand 
commensurate with the number of the fifty-niners. 
Hence, more than half of these found their way 
back to the border before the year was over, bitter, 
disgusted, and poor, scrawling on deserted wagons, in 
answer to the outward motto, ^^ Busted! By Gosh!'* 
The problem of government was born when the 
first squatters ran the lines of Denver City. Here 
was a new settlement far away from the seat of terri- 
torial government, while the government itself was 
impotent. Kansas had no legislature competent to 
administer law at home — far less in outlying colonies. 
But spontaneous self-government came easily to the 
new town. ^'Just to think," wrote one of the pio- 
neers in his diary, 'Hhat within two weeks of the 
arrival of a few dozen Americans in a wilderness, they 
set to work to elect a Delegate to the United States 
Congress, and ask to be set apart as a new Territory! 
But we are of a fast race and in a fast age and must 
prod along." An early snow in November, 1858, 
had confined the miners to their cabins and started 
politics. The result had been the election of two 
delegates, one to Congress and one to Kansas legisla- 
ture, both to ask for governmental direction. Kan- 
sas responded in a few weeks, creating five new 
counties west of 104°, and chartering a city of St. 
Charles, long after St. Charles had been merged into 
Denver. Congress did nothing. 



''PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 147 

The prospective immigration of 1859 inspired 
further and more comprehensive attempts at local 
government. It was well understood that the news 
of gold would send in upon Denver a wave of popu- 
lation and perhaps a reign of lawlessness. The 
adjournment of Congress without action in their 
behalf made it certain that there could be no aid from 
this quarter for at least a year, and became the 
occasion for a caucus in Denver over which William 
Larimer presided on April 11, 1859. As a result of 
this caucus, a call was issued for a convention of 
representatives of the neighboring mining camps to 
meet in the same place four days later. On April 
15, six camps met through their delegates, ''being 
fully impressed with the belief, from early and recent 
precedents, of the power and benefits and duty of 
self-government," and feeling an imperative neces- 
sity ''for an immediate and adequate government, 
for the large population now here and soon to be 
among us . . . and also believing that a territorial 
government is not such as our large and peculiarly 
situated population demands." 

The deliberations thus informally started ended in 
a formal call for a constitutional convention to meet 
in Denver on the first Monday in June, for the pur- 
pose, as an address to the people stated, of framing a 
constitution for a new "state of 'Jefferson." "Shall 
it be," the address demanded, "the government of 
the knife and the revolver, or shall we unite in forming 
here in our golden country, among the ravines and 



148 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

gulches of the Rocky Mountains, and the fertile 
valleys of the Arkansas and the Platte, a new 
and independent State?" The boundaries of the 
prospective state were named in the call as the one 
hundred and second and one hundred and tenth 
meridians of longitude, and the thirty-seventh 
and forty-third parallels of north latitude — includ- 
ing with true frontier amplitude large portions of 
Utah and Nebraska and nearly half of Wyoming, 
in addition to the present state of Colorado. 

When the statehood convention met in Denver on 
June 6, the time was inopportune for concluding 
the movement, since the reaction had set in. The 
height of the gold boom was over, and the return 
migration left it somewhat doubtful whether any 
permanent population would remain in the country 
to need a state. So the convention met on the 6th, 
appointed some eight drafting committees, and ad- 
journed, to await developments, until August 1. 
By this later date, the line had been drawn between 
the confident and the discouraged elements in the 
population, and for six days the convention worked 
upon the question of statehood. As to permanency 
there was now no doubt; but the body divided into 
two nearly equal groups, one advocating immediate 
statehood, the other shrinking from the heavy taxa- 
tion incident to a state establishment and so prefer- 
ring a territorial government with a federal treasury 
behind it. The body, too badly split to reach a con- 
clusion itself, compromised by preparing the way 



"PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 149 

for either development and leaving the choice to a 
public vote. A state constitution was drawn up 
on one hand ; on the other, was prepared a memorial 
to Congress praying for a territorial government, and 
both documents were submitted to a vote on Sep- 
tember 5. Pursuant to the memorial, which was 
adopted, another election was held on October 3, 
at which the local agent of the new Leavenworth 
and Pike's Peak Express Company, Beverly D. 
Williams, was chosen as delegate to Congress. 

The adoption of the territorial memorial failed to 
meet the need for immediate government or to 
prevent the advocates of such government from 
working out a provisional arrangement pending the 
action of Congress. On the day that Williams was 
elected, these advocates chose delegates for a pre- 
liminary territorial constitutional convention which 
met a week later. ^^Here we go," commented 
Byers, "sl regular triple-headed government machine; 
south of 40 deg. we hang on to the skirts' of Kansas ; 
north of 40 deg. to those of Nebraska; straddling the 
line, we have just elected a Delegate to the United 
States Congress from the 'Territory of Jefferson,' 
and ere long we will have in full blast a provisional 
government of Rocky Mountain growth and manu- 
facture." In this convention of October 10, 1859, 
the name of Jefferson was retained for the new 
territory; the boundaries of April 15 were retained, 
and a government similar to the highest type of 
territorial establishment was provided for. If the 



150 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

convention had met on the authority of an enabling 
act, its career could not have been more dignified. 
Its constitution was readily adopted, while officers 
under it were chosen in an orderly election on October 
24. Robert W. Steele, of Ohio, became its governor. 
On November 7 he met his legislature and delivered 
his first inaugural address. 

The territory of Jefferson which thus came into 
existence in the Pike's Peak region illustrates well 
the spirit of the American frontier. The fundamental 
principle of American government which Byers ex- 
pressed in connection with it is applicable at all 
times in similar situations. ^^We claim," he wrote 
in his Rocky Mountain News, ^Hhat any body, or 
community of American citizens, which from any 
cause or under any circumstance is cut off from, or 
from isolation is so situated as not to be under, any 
active and protecting branch of the central govern- 
ment, have a right, if on American soil, to frame a 
government, and enact such laws and regulations as 
may be necessary for their own safety, protection, 
and happiness, always with the condition precedent, 
that they shall, at the earliest moment when the cen- 
tral government shall extend an effective organization 
and laws over them, give it their unqualified support 
and obedience." The life of the spontaneous com- 
monwealth thus called into existence is a creditable 
witness to the American instinct for orderly govern- 
ment. 

When Congress met in December, 1859, the pro- 



''PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 151 

visional territory of Jefferson was in operation, while 
its delegates in Washington were urging the need for 
governmental action. To their influence, President 
Buchanan added, on February 20, 1860, a message 
transmitting the petition from the Pike's Peak coun- 
try. The Senate, upon April 3, received a report 
from the Committee on Territories introducing Sen- 
ate Bill No. 366, for the erection of Colorado terri- 
tory, while Grow of Pennsylvania reported to the 
House on May 10 a bill to erect in the same region a 
territory of Idaho. The name of Jefferson disap- 
peared from the project in the spring of 1860, its 
place being taken by sundry other names for the same 
mountain area. Several weeks were given, in part, 
to debate over this Colorado-Idaho scheme, though 
as usual the debate turned less upon the need for 
this territorial government than upon the attitude 
which the bill should take toward the slavery issue. 
The slavery controversy prevented territorial legis- 
lation in this session, but the reasonableness of the 
Colorado demand was well established. 

The territory of Jefferson, as organized in No- 
vember, 1859, had been from the first recognized as 
merely a temporary expedient. The movement 
for it had gained weight in the summer of that year 
from the probability that it need not be maintained 
for many months. When Congress, however, failed 
in the ensuing session of 1859-1860 to grant the 
relief for which the pioneers had prayed, the wisdom 
of continuing for a second year the life of a govern- 



152 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

ment admitted to be illegal came into question. 
The first session of its legislature had lasted from 
November 7, 1859, to January 25, 1860. It 
had passed comprehensive laws for the regulation of 
titles in lands, water, and mines, and had adopted 
civil and criminal codes. Its courts had been es- 
tablished and had operated with some show of 
authority. But the service and obedience to the 
government had been voluntary, no funds being on 
hand for the payment of salaries and expenses. One 
of the pioneers from Vermont wrote home, ^^ There is 
no hopes [sic] of perfect quiet in our governmental 
matters until we are securely under the wing of our 
National Eagle." In his proclamation calling the 
second election Governor Steele announced that 
'^all persons who expect to be elected to any of the 
above offices should bear in mind that there will be 
no salaries or per diem allowed from this territory, 
but that the General Government will be memorial- 
ized to aid us in our adversity.'' 

Upon this question of revenue the territory of 
Jefferson was wrecked. Taxes could not be col- 
lected, since citizens had only to plead grave doubts 
as to the legality in order to evade payment. ^' We 
have tried a Provisional Government, and how has 
it worked," asked William Larimer in announcing 
his candidacy for the office of territorial delegate. 
^' It did well enough until an attempt was made to 
tax the people to support it." More than this, the 
real need for the government became less apparent 



''PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 153 

as 1860 advanced, for the scattered communities 
learned how to obtain a reasonable peace without 
it. American mining camps are pecuHarly free from 
the need for superimposed government. The new 
camp at once organizes itself on a democratic basis, 
and in mass meeting registers claims, hears and 
decides suits, and administers summary justice. 
Since the Pike's Peak country was only a group of 
mining camps, there proved to be little immediate 
need for a central government, for in the local min- 
ing-district organizations all of the most pressing 
needs of the communities could be satisfied. So 
loyalty to the territory of Jefferson, in the districts 
outside of Denver, waned during 1860, and in the 
summer of that year had virtually disappeared. Its 
administration, however, held together. Governor 
Steele made efforts to rehabilitate its authority, 
was himself reelected, and met another legislature 
in November. 

When the thirty-sixth Congress met for its second 
session in December, 1860, the Jefferson organization 
was in the second year of its life, yet in Congress 
there was no better prospect of quick action than 
there had been since 1857. Indeed the election of 
Lincoln brought out the eloquence of the slavery 
question with a renewed vigor that monopolized the 
time and strength of Congress until the end of Jan- 
uary. Had not the departure of the southern mem- 
bers to their states cleared the way for action, it 
is highly improbable that even this session would 
have produced results of importance. 



154 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Grow had announced in the beginning of the ses- 
sion a territorial platform similar to that which had 
been under debate for three years. Until the close 
of January the southern valedictories held the floor, 
but at last the admission of Kansas, on January 29, 
1861, revealed the fact that pro-slavery opposition 
had departed and that the long-deferred territorial 
scheme could have a fair chance. On the very day 
that Kansas was admitted, with its western boundary 
at the twenty-fifth meridian from Washington, the 
Senate revived its bill No. 366 of the last session 
and took up its deliberation upon a territory for 
Pike's Peak. Only by chance did the name Colo- 
rado remain attached to the bill. Idaho was at one 
time adopted, but was amended out in favor of the 
original name when the bill at last passed the Senate. 
The boundaries were cut down from those which the 
territory had provided for itself. Two degrees were 
taken from the north of the territory, and three 
from the west. In this shape, between 37° and 
41° north latitude, and 25° and 32° of longitude 
west of Washington, the bill received the signature 
of President Buchanan on February 28. The 
absence of serious debate in the passage of this 
Colorado act is excellent evidence of the merit of 
the scheme and the reasons for its being so long 
deferred. 

President Buchanan, content with approving the 
bill, left the appointment of the first officials for 
Colorado to his successor. In the multitude of 



''PIKE'S PEAK OR BUST" 155 

greater problems facing President Lincoln, this was 
neglected for several weeks, but he finally com- 
missioned General William Gilpin as the first 
governor of the territory. Gilpin had long known 
the mountain frontier; he had commanded a detach- 
ment on the Santa Fe trail in the forties, and he had 
written prophetic books upon the future of the 
country to which he was now sent. His loyalty 
was unquestioned and his readiness to assume re- 
sponsibility went so far as perhaps to cease to be a 
virtue. He arrived in Denver on May 29, 1861, 
and within a few days was ready to take charge of 
the government and to receive from the hands of 
Governor Steele such authority as remained in the 
provisional territory of Jefferson. 



CHAPTER X 

FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 

The Pike's Peak boom was only one in a series of 
mining episodes which, within fifteen years of the 
discoveries in California, let in the light of explo- 
ration and settlement upon hundreds of valleys 
scattered over the whole of the Rocky Mountain 
West. The men who exploited California had 
generally been amateur miners, acquiring skill by 
bitter experience; but the next decade developed a 
professional class, mobile as quicksilver, restless 
and adventurous as all the West, which permeated 
into the most remote recesses of the mountains and 
produced before the Civil War was over, as the direct 
result of their search for gold, not only Colorado, 
but Nevada and Arizona, Idaho and Montana. 
Activity was constant during these years all along 
the continental divide. New camps were being 
born overnight, old ones were abandoned by magic. 
Here and there cities rose and remained to mark 
success in the search. Abandoned huts and half- 
worked diggings were scars covering a fourth of the 
continent. 

Colorado, in the summer of 1859, attracted the 
largest of migrations, but while Denver was being 

156 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 157 

settled there began, farther west, a boom which for 
the present outdid it in significance. The old 
Cahfornia trail from Salt Lake crossed the Nevada 
desert and entered California by various passes 
through the Sierra Nevadas. Several trading posts 
had been planted along this trail by Mormons and 
others during the fifties, until in 1854 the legislature 
of Utah had created a Carson County in the west 
end of the territory for the benefit of the settlements 
along the river of the same name. Small discoveries 
of gold were enough to draw to this district a floating 
population which founded a Carson City as early as 
1858. But there were no indications of a great ex- 
citement until after the finding of a marvellously 
rich vein of silver near Gold Hill in the spring of 1859. 
Here, not far from Mt. Davidson and but a few 
miles east of Lake Tahoe and the Sierras, was the 
famous Comstock lode, upon which it was possible 
within five years to build a state. 

The California population, already rushing about 
from one boom to another in perpetual prospecting, 
seized eagerly upon this new district in western 
Utah. The stage route by way of Sacramento and 
Placerville was crowded beyond capacity, while 
hundreds marched over the mountains on foot. 
'^ There was no difficulty in reaching the newly 
discovered region of boundless wealth," asserted a 
journalistic visitor. ^^It lay on the public highway 
to California, on the borders of the state. From 
Missouri, from Kansas and Nebraska, from Pike's 



158 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Peak and Salt Lake, the tide of emigration poured 
in. Transportation from San Francisco was easy. 
I made the trip myself on foot almost in the dead 
of winter, when the mountains were covered with 
snow.'' Carson City had existed before the great 
discovery. Virginia City, named for a renegade 
southerner, nicknamed ^'Virginia," soon followed 
it, while the typical population of the mining camps 
piled in around the two. 

In 1860 miners came in from a larger area. The 
new pony express ran through the heart of the 
fields and aided in advertising them east and west. 
Colorado was only one year ahead in the public eye. 
Both camps obtained their territorial acts within the 
same week, that of Nevada receiving Buchanan's 
signature on March 2, 1861. All of Utah west 
of the thirty-ninth meridian from Washington be- 
came the new territory which, through the need of 
the union for loyal votes, gained its admission as 
a state in three more years. 

The rush to Carson valley drew attention away 
from another mining enterprise further south. In 
the western half of New Mexico, between the Rio 
Grande and the Colorado, there had been success- 
ful mining ever since the acquisition of the territory. 
The southwest boundary of the United States after 
the Mexican War was defined in words that could not 
possibly be applied to the face of the earth. This 
fact, together with knowledge that an easy railway 
grade ran south of the Gila River, had led in 1853 




O .2 
M .5 



W .5 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 159 

to the purchase of additional land from Mexico 
and the definition of a better boundary in the 
Gadsden treaty. In these lands of the Gadsden 
purchase old mines came to light in the years im- 
mediately following. Sylvester Mowry and Charles 
D. Poston were most active in promoting the mining 
companies which revived abandoned claims and de- 
veloped new ones near the old Spanish towns of 
Tubac and Tucson. The region was too remote 
and life too hard for the individual miner to have 
much chance. Organized mining companies here 
took the place of the detached prospector of Colo- 
rado and Nevada. Disappointed miners from Cali- 
fornia came in, and perhaps ^^the Vigilance Com- 
mittee of San Francisco did more to populate the 
new Territory than the silver mines. Tucson be- 
came the headquarters of vice, dissipation, and 
crime. ... It was literally a paradise of devils." 
Excessive dryness, long distances, and Apache dep- 
redation discouraged rapid growth, yet the surveys 
of the early fifties and the passage of the overland 
mail through the camps in 1858 advertised the 
Arizona settlement and enabled it to live. 

The outbreak of the Civil War extinguished for the 
time the Mowry mines and others in the Santa Cruz 
Valley, holding them in check till a second mineral 
area in western New Mexico should be found. 
United States army posts were abandoned, con- 
federate agents moved in, and Indians became bold. 
The federal authority was not reestablished until 



160 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Colonel J. H. Carleton led his California column 
across the Colorado and through New Mexico to 
Tucson early in 1862. During the next two years 
he maintained his headquarters at Santa Fe, carried 
on punitive campaigns against the Navaho and the 
Apache, and encouraged mining. 

The Indian campaigns of Carleton and his aides 
in New Mexico have aroused much controversy. 
There were no treaty rights by which the United 
States had privileges of colonization and develop- 
ment. It was forcible entry and retention, main- 
tained in the face of bitter opposition. Carleton, 
with Kit Carson's assistance, waged a war of scarcely 
concealed extermination. They understood, he re- 
ported to Washington, ^Hhe direct application of 
force as a law. If its application be removed, that 
moment they become lawless. This has been tried 
over and over and over again, and at great expense. 
The purpose now is never to relax the application 
of force with a people that can no more be trusted 
than you can trust the wolves that run through 
their mountains; to gather them together little by 
little, on to a reservation, away from the haunts, 
and hills, and hiding-places of their country, and 
then to be kind to them; there teach their children 
how to read and write, teach them the arts of peace; 
teach them the truths of Christianity. Soon they 
will acquire new habits, new ideas, new modes of 
life ; the old Indians will die off, and carry with them 
all the latent longings for murdering and robbing; 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 161 

the young ones will take their places without these 
longings; and thus, little by little, they will become 
a happy and contented people." 

Mowry's mines had been seized by Carleton at 
the start, as tainted with treason. The whole 
Tucson district was believed to be so thoroughly in 
sympathy with the confederacy that the commanding 
officer was much relieved when rumors came of a 
new placer gold field along the left bank of the Col- 
orado River, around Bill Williams Creek. Thither 
the population of the territory moved as fast as it 
could. Teamsters and other army employees de- 
serted freely. Carleton deliberately encouraged 
surveying and prospecting, and wrote personally 
to General Halleck and Postmaster-general Blair, 
congratulating them because his California column 
had found the gold with which to suppress the con- 
federacy. ^^One of the richest gold countries in 
the world," he described it to be, destined to be the 
centre of a new territorial life, and to throw into the 
shade ^Hhe insignificant village of Tucson." 

The population of the silver camp had begun 
to urge Congress to provide a territory independent 
of New Mexico, immediately after the development 
of the Mowry mines. Delegates and petitions had 
been sent to Washington in the usual style. But 
congressional indifference to new territories had 
blocked progress. The new discoveries reopened 
the case in 1862 and 1863. Forgetful of his Indian 
wards and their rights, the Superintendent of Indian 



C 



162 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Affairs had told of the sad peril of the ''unprotected 
miners" who had invaded Indian territory of clear 
title. They would offer to the ''numerous and 
warlike tribes" an irresistible opportunity. The 
territorial act was finally passed on February 24, 
1863, while the new capital was fixed in the heart 
of the new gold field, at Fort Whipple, near which 
the city of Prescott soon appeared. 

The Indian danger in Arizona was not ended by 
the erection of a territorial government. There never 
came in a population large enough to intimidate 
the tribes, while bad management from the start 
provoked needless wars. Most serious were the 
Apache troubles which began in 1861 and ceased 
only after Crook's campaigns in the early seventies. 
In this struggle occurred the massacre at Camp 
Grant in 1871, when citizens of Tucson, with care- 
ful premeditation, murdered in cold blood more 
than eighty Apache, men, women, and children. 
The degree of provocation is uncertain, but the 
disposition of Tucson, as Mowry has phrased it, 
was not such as to strengthen belief in the justice of 
the attack: "There is only one way to wage war 
against the Apache. A steady, persistent cam- 
paign must be made, following them to their haunts 
— hunting them to the ' fastnesses of the mountains.' 
They must be surrounded, starved into coming in, 
surprised or inveigled — by white flags, or any other 
method, human or divine — and then put to death. 
If these ideas shock any weak-minded individual 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 163 

who thinks himself a philanthropist, I can only say- 
that I pity without respecting his mistaken sym- 
pathy. A man might as well have sympathy for 
a rattlesnake or a tiger." 

The mines of Arizona, though handicapped by 
climate and inaccessibility, brought life into the 
extreme Southwest. Those of Nevada worked the 
partition of Utah. Farther to the north the old 
Oregon country gave out its gold in these same 
years as miners opened up the valleys of the Snake 
and the head waters of the Missouri River. Right 
on the crest of the continental divide appeared the 
northern group of mining camps. 

The territory of Washington had been cut away 
from Oregon at its own request and with Oregon's 
consent in 1853. It had no great population and 
was the subject of no agricultural boom as Oregon 
had been, but the small settlements on Puget Sound 
and around Olympia were too far from the Willa- 
mette country for convenient government. When 
Oregon was admitted in 1859, Washington was 
made to include all the Oregon country outside the 
state, embracing the present Washington and Idaho, 
portions of Montana and Wyoming, and extending 
to the continental divide. Through it ran the over- 
land trail from Fort Hall almost to Walla Walla. 
Because of its urging Congress built a new wagon 
road that was passable by 1860 from Fort Benton, 
on the upper Missouri, to the junction of the Co- 
lumbia and Snake. Farther east the active business 



164 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

of the American Fur Company had by 1859 estab- 
lished steamboat communication from St. Louis 
to Fort Benton, so that an overland route to rival 
the old Platte trail was now available. 

In eastern Washington the most important of the 
Indians were the Nez Perces, whose peaceful habits 
and friendly disposition had been noted since the 
days of Lewis and Clark, and who had permitted 
their valley of the Snake to become a main route to 
Oregon. Treaties with these had been made in 1855 
by Governor Stevens, in accordance with which 
most of the tribe were in 1860 living on their reserve 
at the junction of the Clearwater and Snake, and 
were fairly prosperous. Here as elsewhere was the 
specific agreement that no whites save government 
employees should be allowed in the Indian Country; 
but in the summer of 1861 the news that gold had 
been found along the Clearwater brought the agree- 
ment to naught. Gold had actually been discovered 
the summer before. In the spring of 1861 pack 
trains from Walla Walla brought a horde of miners 
east over the range, while steamboats soon found 
their way up the Snake. In the fork between the 
Clearwater and Snake was a good landing where, in 
the autumn of 1861, sprang up the new Lewiston, 
named in honor of the great explorer, acting as 
centre of life for five thousand miners in the district, 
and showing by its very existence on the Indian re- 
serve the futility of treaty restrictions in the face 
of the gold fever. The troubles of the Indian 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 165 

department were great. ''To attempt to restrain 
miners would be, to my mind, like attempting to 
restrain the whirlwind,'' reported Superintendent 
Kendall. ''The history of California, Australia, 
Frazer river, and even of the country of which I am 
now writing, furnishes abundant evidence of the 
attractive power of even only reported gold dis- 
coveries. 

"The mines on Salmon river have become a fixed 
fact, and are equalled in richness by few recorded 
discoveries. Seeing the utter impossibility of pre- 
venting miners from going to the mines, I have re- 
frained from taking any steps which, by certain 
want of success, would tend to weaken the force of 
the law. At the same time I as carefully avoided 
giving any consent to unauthorized statements, 
and verbally instructed the agent in charge that, 
while he might not be able to enforce the laws for 
want of means, he must give no consent to any at- 
tempt to lay out a town at the juncture of the Snake 
and Clearwater rivers, as he had expressed a desire 
of doing. " 

Continued developments proved that Lewiston 
was in the centre of a region of unusual mineral 
wealth. The Clearwater finds were followed closely 
by discoveries on the Salmon River, another tribu- 
tary of the Snake, a little farther south. The Boise 
mines came on the heels of this boom,, being followed 
by a rush to the Owyhee district, south of the great 
bend of the Snake. Into these various camps poured 



166 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the usual flood of miners from the whole West. Be- 
fore 1862 was over eastern Washington had outgrown 
the bounds of the territorial government on Puget 
Sound. Like the Pike's Peak diggings, and the 
placers of the Colorado Valley, and the Carson and 
Virginia City camps, these called for and received 
a new territorial establishment. 

In 1860 the territories of Washington and Ne- 
braska had met along a common boundary at the 
top of the Rocky Mountains. Before Washington 
was divided in 1863, Nebraska had changed its shape 
under the pressure of a small but active population 
north of its seat of government. The centres of 
population in Nebraska north of the Platte River 
represented chiefly overflows from Iowa and Minne- 
sota. Emigrating from these states farmers had by 
1860 opened the country on the left bank of the Mis- 
souri, in the region of the Yankton Sioux. The Mis- 
souri traffic had developed both shores of the river 
past Fort Pierre and Fort Union to Fort Benton, by 
1859. To meet the needs of the scattered people 
here Nebraska had been partitioned in 1861 along 
the line of the Missouri and the forty-third parallel. 
Dakota had been created out of the country thus cut 
loose and in two years more shared in the fate 
of eastern Washington. Idaho was established in 
1863 to provide home rule for the miners of the 
new mineral region. It included a great rectangle, 
on both sides of the Rockies, reaching south to Utah 
and Nebraska, west to its present western boun- 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 167 

dary at Oregon and 117°, east to 104°, the present 
eastern line of Montana and Wyoming. Dakota 
and Washington were cut down for its sake. 

It seemed, in 1862 and 1863, as though every Httle 
rivulet in the whole mountain country possessed its 
treasures to be given up to the first prospector with 
the hardihood to tickle its soil. Four important 
districts along the upper course of the Snake, not to 
mention hundreds of minor ones, lent substance to 
this appearance. Almost before Idaho could be or- 
ganized its area of settlement had broadened enough 
to make its own division in the near future a cer- 
tainty. East of the Bitter Root Mountains, in the 
head waters of the Missouri tributaries, came a long 
series of new booms. 

When the American Fur Company pushed its 
little steamer Chippewa up to the vicinity of Fort 
Benton in 1859, none realized that a new era for 
the upper Missouri had nearly arrived. For half 
a century the fur trade had been followed in this 
region and had dotted the country with tiny forts 
and palisades, but there had been no immigration, 
and no reason for any. The Mullan road, which 
Congress had authorized in 1855, was in course of 
construction from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, but 
as yet there were few immigrants to follow the new 
route. Considerably before the territory of Idaho 
was created, however, the active prospectors of the 
Snake Valley had crossed the range and inspected 
most of the Blackfoot country in the direction of 



168 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Fort Benton. They had organized for themselves 
a Missoula County, Washington territory, in July, 
1862, an act which may be taken as the beginning 
of an entirely new movement. 

Two brothers, James and Granville Stuart, were 
the leaders in developing new mineral areas east of 
the main range. After experience in California and 
several years of life along the trails, they settled 
down in the Deer Lodge Valley, and began to open 
up their mines in 1861. They accomplished little 
this year since the steamboat to Fort Benton, carry- 
ing supplies, was burned, and their trip to Walla 
Walla for shovels and picks took up the rest of the 
season. But early in 1862 they were hard and suc- 
cessfully at work. Reenforcements, destined for the 
Salmon River mines farther west, came to them in 
June; one party from Fort Benton, the other from 
the Colorado diggings, and both were easily per- 
suaded to stay and join in organizing Missoula 
County. Bannack City became the centre of their 
operations. 

^' Alder Gulch and Virginia City were, in 1863, a 
second focus for the mines of eastern Idaho. Their 
deposits had been found by accident by a prospect- 
ing party which was returning to Bannack City after 
an unsuccessful trip. The party, which had been 
investigating the Big Horn Mountains, discovered 
Alder Gulch between the Beaver Head and Madi- 
son rivers, early in June. With an accurate knowl- 
edge of the mining population, the discoverers or- 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 169 

ganized the mining district and registered their own 
claims before revealing the location of the new dig- 
gings. Then came a stampede from Bannack City 
which gave to Virginia City a population of 10,000 
by 1864. 

Another mining district, in Last Chance Gulch, 
gave rise in 1864 to Helena, the last of the great boom 
towns of this period. Its situation as well as its 
resources aided in the growth of Helena, which lay a 
little west of the Madison fork of the Missouri, and 
in the direct line from Bannack and Virginia City to 
Fort Benton. Only 142 miles of easy staging above 
the head of Missouri River navigation, it was a 
natural post on the main line of travel to the north- 
west fields. 

The excitement over Bannack and Virginia and 
Helena overlapped in years the period of similar 
boom in Idaho. It had begun even before Idaho 
had been created. When this was once organized, 
the same inconveniences which had justified it, 
justified as well its division to provide home rule for 
the miners east of the Bitter Root range. An act of 
1864 created Montana territory with the boundaries 
which the state possesses to-day, while that part of 
Idaho south of Montana, now Wyoming, was tem- 
porarily reattached to Dakota. Idaho assumed its 
present form. The simultaneous development in all 
portions of the great West of rich mining camps did 
much to attract public attention as well as population. 

In 1863 nearly all of the camps were flourishing. 



170 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The mountains were occupied for the whole distance 
from Mexico to Canada, while the trails were 
crowded with emigrants hunting for fortune. The 
old trails bore much of the burden of migration as 
usual, but new spurs were opened to meet new needs. 
In the north, the MuUan road had made easy travel 
from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, and had been com- 
pleted since 1862. Congress authorized in 1864 a new 
road from eastern Nebraska, which should run north 
of the Platte trail, and the war department had sent 
out personally conducted parties of emigrants from 
the vicinity of St. Paul. The Idaho and Montana 
mines were accessible from Fort Hall, the former by 
the old emigrant road, the latter by a new northeast 
road to Virginia City. The Carson mines were on 
the main line of the California road. The Arizona 
fields were commonly reached from California, by 
way of Fort Yuma. 

The shifting population which inhabited the new 
territories invites and at the same time defies de- 
scription. It was made up chiefly of young men. 
Respectable women were not unknown, but were so 
few in number as to have little measurable influence 
upon social life. In many towns they were in the 
minority, even among their sex, since the easily won 
wealth of the camps attracted dissolute women who 
cannot be numbered but who must be imagined. 
The social tone of the various camps was determined 
by the preponderance of men, the absence of regular 
labor, and the speculative fever which was the 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 171 

justification of their existence. The political tone 
was determined by the nature of the population, the 
character of the industry, and the remoteness from 
a seat of government. Combined, these factors pro- 
duced a type of life the like of which America had 
never known, and whose picturesque qualities have 
blinded the thoughtless into believing that it was ro- 
mantic. It was at best a hard bitter struggle with 
the dark places only accentuated by the tinsel of 
gambling and adventure. 

A single street meandering along a valley, with one- 
story huts flanking it in irregular rows, was the typi- 
cal mining camp. The saloon and the general store, 
sometimes combined, were its representative insti- 
tutions. Deep ruts along the street bore witness to 
the heavy wheels of the freighters, while horses 
loosely tied to all available posts at once revealed the 
regular means of locomotion, and by the careless 
way they were left about showed that this sort of 
property was not likely to be stolen. The mining 
population centring here lived a life of contrasts. 
The desolation and loneliness of prospecting and 
working claims alternated with the excitement of 
coming to town. Few decent beings habitually 
lived in the towns. The resident population ex- 
pected to live off the miners, either in way of trade, 
or worse. The bar, the gambling-house, the dance- 
hall have been made too common in description to 
need further account. In the reaction against lone- 
liness, the extremes of drunkenness, debauchery, and 



172 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

murder were only too frequent in these places of 
amusement. 

That the camps did not destroy themselves in their 
own frenzy is a tribute to the solid qualities which 
underlay the recklessness and shiftlessness of much 
of the population. In most of the camps there came 
a time when decency finally asserted itself in the 
only possible way to repress lawlessness. The ra- 
pidity with which these camps had drawn their hun- 
dreds and their thousands into the fastnesses of the 
territories carried them beyond the limits of ordi- 
nary law and regular institutions. Law and the 
politician followed fast enough, but there was gener- 
ally an interval after the discovery during which such 
peace prevailed as the community itself demanded. 
In absence of sheriff and constable, and jail in which 
to incarcerate offenders, the vigilance committee was 
the only protection of the new camp. Such summary 
justice as these committees commonly executed is 
evidence of innate tendency toward law and order, 
not of their defiance. The typical camp passed 
through a period of peaceful exploitation at the start, 
then came an era of invasion by hordes of miners 
and disreputable hangers-on, with accompanying vio- 
lence and crime. Following this, the vigilance com- 
mittee, in its stern repression of a few of the crudest 
sins, marks the beginning of a reign of law. 

The mining camps of the early sixties familiar- 
ized the United States with the whole area of the 
nation, and dispelled most of the remaining tradition 



FROM ARIZONA TO MONTANA 173 

of desert which hung over the mountain West. 
They attracted a large floating population, they 
secured the completion of the political map through 
the erection of new territories, and they emphasized 
loudly the need for national transportation on a 
larger scale than the trail and the stage coach could 
permit. But they did not directly secure the pres- 
ence of permanent population in the new territories. 
Arizona and Nevada lost most of their inhabitants 
as soon as the first flush of discovery was over. 
Montana, Idaho, and Colorado declined rapidly to a 
fraction of their largest size. None of them was suc- 
cessful in securing a large permanent population until 
agriculture had gained firm foothold. Many indeed 
who came to mine remained to plough, but the per- 
manent populating of the Far West was the work of 
railways and irrigation two decades later. Yet the 
mining camps had served their purpose in revealing 
the nature of the whole of the national domain. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 



Close upon the heels of the overland migrations 
came an organized traffic to supply their needs. 
Oregon, Salt Lake, California, and all the later gold 
fields, drew population away from the old Missouri 
border, scattered it in little groups over the face of 
the desert, and left it there crying for sustenance. 
Many of the new colonies were not self-supporting 
for a decade or more ; few of them were independent 
within a year or two. In all there was a strong de- 
mand for necessities and luxuries which must be 
hauled from the states to the new market by the 
routes which the pioneers themselves had travelled. 
Greater than their need for material supplies was that 
for intellectual stimulus. Letters, newspapers, and 
the regular carriage of the mails were constantly de- 
manded of the express companies and the post-office 
department. To meet this pressure there was or- 
ganized in the fifties a great system of wagon traffic. 
In the years from 1858 to 1869 it reached its mighty 
culmination; while its possibilities of speed, order, 
and convenience had only just come to be realized 
when the continental railways brought this agency 
of transportation to an end. 

174 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 175 

The individual emigrant who had gathered to- 
gether his family, his flocks, and his household 
goods, who had cut away from the life at home and 
staked everything on his new venture, was the unit 
in the great migrations. There was no regular pro- 
vision for going unless one could form his own self- 
contained and self-supporting party. Various bands 
grouped easily into larger bodies for common defence, 
but the characteristic feature of the emigration was 
private initiative. The home-seekers had no power 
in themselves to maintain communication with 
the old country, yet they had no disposition to be 
forgotten or to forget. Professional freighting com- 
panies and carriers of mails appeared just as soon as 
the traffic promised a profit. 

A water mail to California had been arranged even 
before the gold discovery lent a new interest to the 
Pacific Coast. From New York to the Isthmus, 
and thence to San Francisco, the mails were to be 
carried by boats of the Pacific Mail Steamship Com- 
pany, which sent the nucleus of its fleet around 
Cape Horn to Pacific waters in 1848. The arrival 
of the first mail in San Francisco in February, 
1849, commenced the regular public communication 
between the United States and the new colonies. 
For the places lying away from the coast, mails were 
hauled under contract as early as 1849. Oregon, 
Utah, New Mexico, and California were given a 
measure of irregular and unsatisfactory service. 

There is little interest in the earlier phases of the 



176 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

overland mail service save in that they foreshadowed 
greater things. A stage line was started from In- 
dependence to Santa Fe in the summer of 1849; 
another contract was let to a men*jiamed Woodson 
for a monthly carriage to Salt Lake City. Neither 
of the carriers made a serious attempt to stock his 
route or open stations. Their stages advanced under 
the same conditions, and with little more rapidity 
than the ordinary emigrant or freighter. Mormon 
interests organized a Great Salt Lake Valley Carrying 
Company at about this time. For four or five years 
both government and private industry were experi- 
menting with the problems of long-distance wagon 
traffic, — the roads, the vehicles, the stock, the sta- 
tions, the supplies. Most picturesque was the effort 
made in 1856, by the War Department, to acclimate 
the Saharan camel on the American desert as a beast 
of burden. Congress had appropriated $30,000 for 
the experiment, in execution of which Secretary 
Davis sent Lieutenant H. C. Wayne to the Levant to 
purchase the animals. Some seventy-five camels 
were imported into Texas and tested near San An- 
tonio. There is a long congressional document filled 
with the correspondence of this attempt and em- 
bellished with cuts of types of camels and equip- 
ment. 

While the camels were yet browsing on the Texas 
plains. Congress made a more definite movement 
towards supplying the Pacific Slope with adequate 
service. It authorized the Postmaster-general in 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 177 

1857 to call for bids for an overland mail which, in 
a single organization, should join the Missouri to 
Sacramento, and which should be subsidized to run 
at a high scheduled speed. The service which the 
Postmaster-general invited in his advertisement 
was to be semi-weekly, weekly, or semi-monthly at 
his discretion; it was to be for a term of six years; 
it was to carry through the mails in four-horse 
wagons in not more than twenty-five days. A long 
list of bidders, including most of the firms engaged in 
plains freighting, responded with their bids and 
itineraries; from them the department selected the 
offer of a company headed by one John Butterfield, 
and explained to the public in 1857 the reasons for its 
choice. The route to which the Butterfield contract 
was assigned began at St. Louis and Memphis, made 
a junction near the western border of Arkansas, 
and proceeded thence through Preston, Texas, El 
Paso, and Fort Yuma. For semi-weekly mails 
the company was to receive $600,000 a year. The 
choice of the most southern of routes required con- 
siderable explanation, since the best-known road ran 
by the Platte and South Pass. In criticising this 
latter route the Postmaster-general pointed out the 
cold and snow of winter, and claimed that the ex- 
perience of the department during seven years proved 
the impossibility of maintaining a regular service 
here. A second available road had been revealed 
by the thirty-fifth parallel survey, across northern 
Texas and through Albuquerque, New Mexico; but 

N 



178 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

this was likewise too long and too severe. The best 
route, in his mind — the one open all the year, 
through a temperate climate, suitable for migration 
as well as traffic — was this southern route, via El 
Paso. It is well to remember that the administra- 
tion which made this choice was democratic and of 
strong southern sympathies, and that the Pacific 
railway was expected to follow the course of the 
overland mail. 

The first overland coaches left the opposite ends 
of the line on September 15, 1858. The east-bound 
stage carried an agent of the Post-office Department, 
whose report states that the through trip to Tipton, 
Missouri, and thence by rail to St. Louis, was made 
in 20 days, 18 hours, 26 minutes, actual time. ^^I 
cordially congratulate you upon the result,^' wired 
President Buchanan to Butterfield. ^^ It is a glo- 
rious triumph for civilization and the Union. Set- 
tlements will soon follow the course of the road, and 
the East and West will be bound together by a chain 
of living Americans which can never be broken.'^ 
The route was 2795 miles long. For nearly all the 
way there was no settlement upon which the stages 
could rely. The company built such stations as it 
needed. 

The vehicle of the overland mail, the most inter- 
esting vehicle of the plains, was the coach manufac- 
tured by the Abbott-Downing Company of Concord, 
New Hampshire. No better wagon for the purpose 
has been devised. Its heavy wheels, with wide, thick 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 179 

tires, were set far apart to prevent capsizing. Its 
body, braced with iron bands, and built of stout white 
oak, was slung on leather thoroughbraces which took 
the strain better and were more nearly unbreakable 
than any other springs. Inside were generally three 
seats, for three passengers each, though at times 
as many as fourteen besides the driver and mes- 
senger were carried. Adjustable curtains kept out 
part of the rain and cold. High up in front sat the 
driver, with a passenger or two on the box and a large 
assortment of packages tucked away beneath his 
seat. Behind the body was the triangular ^^boot" 
in which were stowed the passengers' boxes and the 
mail sacks. The overflow of mail went inside under 
the seats. Mr. Clemens tells of filling the whole 
body three feet deep with mail, and of the passengers 
being forced to sprawl out on the irregular bed thus 
made for them. Complaining letter-writers tell of 
sacks carried between the axles and the body, under 
the coach, and of the disasters to letters and contents 
resulting from fording streams. Drawn by four gal- 
loping mules and painted a gaudy red or green, the 
coach was a visible emblem of spectacular western 
advance. Horace Greeley's coach, bright red, was 
once charged by a herd of enraged buffaloes and 
overturned, to the discomfort and injury of the ven- 
erable editor. 

It was no comfortable or luxurious trip that the 
overland passenger had, with all the sumptuous 
equipment of the new route. The time limit was 



180 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

twenty-five days, reduced in practice to twenty-two 
or twenty-three, at the price of constant travel day 
and night, regardless of weather or convenience. 
One passenger who declined to follow this route has 
left his reason why. The ^'Southern, known as the 
Butterfield or American Express, offered to start me 
in an ambulance from St. Louis, and to pass me 
through Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Yuma on the Gila 
River, in fact through the vilest and most desolate 
portion of the West. Twenty-four mortal days and 
nights — twenty-five being schedule time — must be 
spent in that ambulance ; passengers becoming crazy 
by whiskey, mixed with want of sleep, are often 
obliged to be strapped to their seats; their meals, 
despatched during the ten-minute halts, are simply 
abominable, the heats are excessive, the climate 
malarious ; lamps may not be used at night for fear of 
non-existent Indians: briefly there is no end to this 
Via Mala's miseries." But the alternative which 
confronted this traveller in 1860 was scarcely more 
pleasant. '^You may start by stage to the gold re- 
gions about Denver City or Pike's Peak, and thence, 
if not accidentally or purposely shot, you may pro- 
ceed by an uncertain ox train to Great Salt Lake City, 
which latter part cannot take less than thirty-five 
days." 

Once upon the road, the passenger might nearly as 
well have been at sea. There was no turning back. 
His discomforts and dangers became inevitable. 
The stations erected along the trail were chiefly 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 181 

for the benefit of the live stock. Horses and mules 
must be kept in good shape, whatever happened to 
passengers. Some of the depots, '^home stations,'* 
had a family in residence, a dwelling of logs, adobe, 
or sod, and offered bacon, potatoes, bread, and coffee 
of a sort, to those who were not too squeamish. The 
others, or ^^ swing" stations, had little but a corral 
and a haystack, with a few stock tenders. The 
drivers were often drunk and commonly profane. 
The overseers and division superintendents differed 
from them only in being a little more resolute and 
dangerous. Freighting and coaching were not child's 
play for either passengers or employees. 

The Butterfield Overland Express began to work 
its six year contract in September, 1858. Other 
coach and mail services increased the number of 
continental routes to three by 1860. From New 
Orleans, by way of San Antonio and El Paso, a 
weekly service had been organized, but its impor- 
tance was far less than that of the great route, and 
not equal to that by way of the Great Salt Lake. 

Staging over the Platte trail began on a large scale 
with the discovery of gold near Pike's Peak in 1858. 
The Mormon mails, interrupted by the Mormon 
War, had been revived ; but a new concern had sprung 
up under the name of the Leavenworth and Pike's 
Peak Express Company. The firm of Jones and 
Russell, soon to give way to Russell, Majors, and 
Waddell, had seen the possibilities of the new boom 
camps, and had inaugurated regular stage service in 



182 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

May, 1859. Henry Villard rode out in the first 
coach. Horace Greeley followed in June. After 
some experimenting in routes, the line accepted 
a considerable part of the Platte trail, leaving the 
road at the forks of the river. Here Julesburg 
came into existence as the most picturesque home 
station on the plains. It was at this station that 
Jack Slade, whom Mark Twain found to be a mild, 
hospitable, coffee-sharing man, cut off the ears of 
old Jules, after the latter had emptied two barrels of 
bird-shot into him. It was ^'celebrated for its des- 
peradoes," wrote General Dodge. ^'No twenty-four 
hours passed without its contribution to Boots Hill 
(the cemetery whose every occupant was buried in 
his boots), and homicide was performed in the most 
genial and whole-souled way." 

Before the Denver coach had been running for a 
year another enterprise had brought the central 
route into greater prominence. Butterfield had given 
California news in less than twenty-five days from 
the Missouri, but California wanted more even than 
this, until the electric telegraph should come. Sena- 
tor Gwin urged upon the great freight concern the 
starting of a faster service for light mails only. It 
was William H. Russell who, to meet this supposed 
demand, organized a pony express, which he an- 
nounced to a startled public in the end of March. 
Across the continent from Placerville to St. Joseph 
he built his stations from nine to fifteen miles apart, 
nearly two hundred in all. He supplied these with 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 183 

tenders and riders, stocked them with fodder and 
fleet American horses, and started his first riders at 
both ends on the 3d of April, 1860. 

Only letters of great commercial importance could 
be carried by the new express. They were written 
on tissue paper, packed into a small, light saddle- 
bag, and passed from rider to rider along the route. 
The time announced in the schedule was ten days, — 
two weeks better than Butterfield's best. To make 
it called for constant motion at top speed, with 
horses trained to the work and changed every few 
miles. The carriers were slight men of 135 pounds 
or under, whose nerve and endurance could stand 
the strain. Often mere boys were employed in the 
dangerous service. Rain or snow or death made 
no difference to the express. Dangers of falling at 
night, of missing precipitous mountain roads where 
advance at a walk was perilous, had to be faced. 
When Indians were hostile, this new risk had to be 
run. But for eighteen months the service was con- 
tinued as announced. It ceased only when the over- 
land telegraph, in October, 1861, declared its readi- 
ness to handle through business. 

In the pony express was the spectacular perfec- 
tion of overland service. Its best record was some 
hours under eight days. It was conducted along 
the well-known trail from St. Joseph to Forts Kear- 
ney, Laramie, and Bridger; thence to Great Salt 
Lake City, and by way of Carson City to Placerville 
and Sacramento. It carried the news in a time when 



184 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

every day brought new rumors of war and disunion, 
in the pregnant campaign of 1860 and through the 
opening of the Civil War. The records of its riders 
at times approached the marvellous. One lad, 
William F. Cody, who has since lived to become the 
personal embodiment of the Far West as Buffalo 
Bill, rode more than 320 consecutive miles on a single 
tour. The literature of the plains is full of instances 
of courage and endurance shown in carrying through 
the despatches. 

The Butterfield mail was transferred to the central 
route of the pony express in the summer of 1861. 
For two and a half years it had run steadily along 
its southern route, proving the entire practicability 
of carrying on such a service. But its expense had 
been out of all proportion to its revenue. In 1859 
the Postmaster-general reported that its total re- 
ceipts from mails had been $27,229.94, as against a 
cost of $600,000. It is not unlikely that the fast 
service would have been dropped had not the new 
military necessity of 1861 forbidden any act which 
might loosen the bonds between the Pacific and the 
Atlantic states. Congress contemplated the ap- 
proach of war and authorized early in 1861 the aban- 
donment of the southern route through the con- 
federate territory, and the transfer of the service to 
the line of the pony express. To secure additional 
safety the mails were sent by way of Davenport, 
Iowa, and Omaha, to Fort Kearney a few times, but 
Atchison became the starting-point at last, while 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 185 

military force was used to keep the route free from 
interference. The transfer worked a shortening of 
from five to seven days over the southern route. 

In the autumn of 1861, when the overland mail 
and the pony express were both running at top speed 
along the Platte trail, the overland service reached 
its highest point. In October the telegraph brought 
an end to the express. *'The Pacific to the Atlantic 
sends greeting," ran the first message over the new 
wire, '' and may both oceans be dry before a foot of all 
the land that lies between them shall belong to any 
other than one united country." Probably the pony 
express had done its share in keeping touch between 
California and the Union. Certainly only its na- 
tional purpose justified its existence, since it was run 
at a loss that brought ruin to Russell, its backer, and 
to Majors and Waddell, his partners. 

Russell, Majors, and Waddell, with the biggest 
freighting business of the plains, had gone heavily 
into passenger and express service in 1859-1860. 
Russell had forced through the pony express against 
the wishes of his partners, carried away from prac- 
tical considerations by the magnitude of the idea. 
The transfer of the southern overland to their route 
increased their business and responsibility. The 
future of the route steadily looked larger. ^' Every 
day," wrote the Postmaster-general, '^brings in- 
telligence of the discovery of new mines of gold and 
silver in the region traversed by this mail route, 
which gives assurance that it will not be many years 



186 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

before it will be protected and supported throughout 
the greater part of the route by a civilized popula- 
tion." Under the name of the Central Overland, 
California, and Pike's Peak Express the firm tried to 
keep up a struggle too great for them. " Clean out 
of Cash and Poor Pay" is said to have been an irrev- 
erent nickname coined by one of their drivers. As 
their embarrassments steadily increased, their notes 
were given to a rival contractor who was already be- 
ginning local routes to reach the mining camps of 
eastern Washington. Ben Holladay had been the 
power behind the company for several months before 
the courts gave him control of their overland stage 
line in 1862. The greatest names in this overland 
business are first Butterfield, then Russell, Majors, 
and Waddell, and then Ben Holladay, whose power 
lasted until he sold out to Wells, Fargo, and Company 
in 1866. Ben Holladay was the magnate of the 
plains during the early sixties. A hostile critic, 
Henry Villard, has written that he was ^^a genuine 
specimen of the successful Western pioneer of former 
days, illiterate, coarse, pretentious, boastful, false, and 
cunning." In later days he carried his speculation 
into railways and navigation, but already his was the 
name most often heard in the West. Mark Twain, 
who has left in ^^ Roughing It" the best picture of 
life in the Far West in this decade, speaks lightly of 
him when he tells of a youth travelling in the Holy 
Land with a reverend preceptor who was impressing 
upon him the greatness of Moses, '^ ' the great guide, 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 187 

soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel ! Jack, 
from this spot where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a 
fearful desert three hundred miles in extent — and 
across that desert that wonderful man brought the 
children of Israel ! — guiding them with unfailing 
sagacity for forty years over the sandy desolation 
and among the obstructing rocks and hills, and 
landed them at last, safe and sound, within sight of 
this very spot. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing 
to do. Jack. Think of it ! ' 

'^^ Forty years? Only three hundred miles?'" 
replied Jack. '' ^ Humph ! Ben HoUaday would have 
fetched them through in thirty-six hours!'" 

Under HoUaday's control the passenger and ex- 
press service were developed into what was probably 
the greatest one-man institution in America. He 
directed not only the central overland, but spur lines 
with government contracts to upper California, 
Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. He travelled up and 
down the line constantly himself, attending in person 
to business in Washington and on the Pacific. The 
greatest difficulties in his service were the Indians 
and progress as stated in the railway. Man and 
nature could be fought off and overcome, but the life 
of the stage-coach was limited before it was begun. 

The Indian danger along the trails had steadily 
increased since the commencement of the migrations. 
For many years it had not been large, since there 
was room for all and the emigrants held well to the 
beaten track. But the gold camps had introduced 



188 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

settlers into new sections, and had sent prospectors 
into all the Indian Country. The opening of new 
roads to the Pacific increased the pressure, until the 
Indians began to believe that the end was at hand 
unless they should bestir themselves. The last years 
of the overland service, between 1862 and 1868, 
were hence filled with Indian attacks. Often for 
weeks no coach could go through. Once, by pre- 
meditation, every station for nearly two hundred 
miles was destroyed overnight, Julesburg, the great- 
est of them all, being in the list. The presence of 
troops to defend seemed only to increase the zeal of 
the red men to destroy. 

Besides these losses, which lessened his profits and 
threatened ruin, Holladay had to meet competition 
in his own trade, and detraction as well. Captain 
James L. Fiske, who had broken a new road through 
from Minnesota to Montana, came east in 1863, ^^by 
the ' overland stage,' travelling over the saline plains 
of Laramie and Colorado Territory and the sand 
deserts of Nebraska and Kansas. The country was 
strewed with the skeletons and carcases of cattle, 
and the graves of the early Mormon and California 
pilgrims lined the roadside. This is the worst emi- 
grant route that I have ever travelled; much of the 
road is through deep sand, feed is very scanty, a 
great deal of the water is alkaline, and the snows in 
winter render it impassable for trains. The stage 
line is wretchedly managed. The company under- 
take to furnish travellers with meals, (at a dollar a 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 189 

meal,) but very frequently on arriving at a station 
there was nothing to eat, the supplies had not been 
sent on. On one occasion we fasted for thirty-six 
hours. The stages were sometimes in a miserable 
condition. We were put into a coach one night with 
only two boards left in the bottom. On remonstrat- 
ing with the driver, we were told to hold on by the 
sides." 

At the close of the Civil War, however, Holladay 
controlled a monopoly in stage service between the 
Missouri River and Great Salt Lake. The express 
companies and railways met him at the ends of his 
link, but had to accept his terms for intermediate 
traffic. In the summer of 1865 a competing firm 
started a Butterfield's Overland Despatch to run on 
the Smoky Hill route to Denver. It soon found that 
Indian dangers here were greater than along the 
Platte, and it learned how near it was to bankruptcy 
when Holladay offered to buy it out in 1866. He had 
sent his agents over the rival line, and had in his hand 
a more detailed statement of resources and con- 
ditions than the Overland Despatch itself possessed. 
He purchased easily at his own price and so ended 
this danger of competition. 

Such was the character of the overland traffic that 
any day might bring a successful rival, or loss by 
accident. Holladay seems to have realized that the 
advantages secured by priority were over, and that 
the trade had seen its best day. In the end of 1866 
he sold out his lines to the greatest of his competitors, 



190 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Wells, Fargo, and Company. He sold out wisely. 
The new concern lost on its purchase through the 
rapid shortening of the route. During 1866 the 
Pacific railway had advanced so far that the end of 
the mail route was moved to Fort Kearney in No- 
vember. By May, 1869, some years earlier than 
Wells, Fargo had estimated, the road was done. And 
on the completion of the Union and Central Pacific 
railways the great period of the overland mail was 
ended. 

Parallel to the overland mail rolled an overland 
freight that lacked the seeming romance of the 
former, but possessed quite as much of real signifi- 
cance. No one has numbered the trains of wagons 
that supplied the Far West. Santa Fe wagons they 
were now; Pennsylvania or Pittsburg wagons they 
had been called in the early days of the Santa Fe 
trade; Conestoga wagons they had been in the 
remoter time of the trans- Alleghany migrations. 
But whatever their name, they retained the charac- 
teristics of the wagons and caravans of the earlier 
period. HoUaday bought over 150 such wagons, 
organized in trains of twenty-six, from the Butter- 
field Overland Despatch in 1866. Six thousand 
were counted passing Fort Kearney in six weeks in 
1865. One of the drivers on the overland mail, 
Frank Root, relates that Russell, Majors, and Wad- 
dell owned 6250 wagons and 75,000 oxen at the height 
of their business. The long trains, crawling along 
half hidden in their clouds of dust, with the noises 



THE OVERLAND MAIL 191 

of the animals and the profanity of the drivers, were 
the physical bond between the sections. The mail 
and express served politics and intellect ; the freight- 
ers provided the comforts and decencies of Hfe. 

The overland traffic had begun on the heels of the 
first migrations. Its growth during the fifties and 
its triumphant period in the sixties were great ar- 
guments in favor of the construction of railways to 
take its place. It came to an end when the first 
continental railroad was completed in 1869. For 
decades after this time the stages still found useful 
service on branch lines and to new camps, and occa- 
sional exhibition in the ^'Wild West Shows," but the 
railways were following them closely, for a new period 
of American history had begun. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE engineers' FRONTIER 

In a national way, the South strugghng against 
the North prevented the early location of a Pacific 
railway. Locally, every village on the Mississippi 
from the Lakes to the Gulf hoped to become the ter- 
minus and had advocates throughout its section of 
the country. The list of claimants is a catalogue 
of Mississippi Valley towns. New Orleans, Vicks- 
burg, Memphis, Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, and 
Duluth were all entered in the competition. By 
1860 the idea had received general acceptance; no 
one in the future need urge its adoption, but the 
greatest part of the work remained to be done. 

Born during the thirties, the idea of a Pacific rail- 
way was of uncertain origin and parentage. Just 
so soon as there was a railroad anywhere, it was 
inevitable that some enterprising visionary should 
project one in imagination to the extremity of the 
continent. The railway speculation, with which the 
East was seething during the administrations of 
Andrew Jackson, was boiling over in the young West, 
so that the group of men advocating a railway to 
connect the oceans were but the product of their 
time. 

192 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 193 

Greatest among these enthusiasts was Asa Whit- 
ney, a New York merchant interested in the China 
trade and eager to win the commerce of the Orient 
for the United States. Others had declared such a 
road to be possible before he presented his memorial 
to Congress in 1845, but none had staked so much 
upon the idea. He abandoned the business, con- 
ducted a private survey in Wisconsin and Iowa, and 
was at last convinced that ^Hhe time is not far dis- 
tant when Oregon will become ... a separate 
nation'^ unless communication should ^^ unite them 
to us." He petitioned Congress in January, 1845, 
for a franchise and a grant of land, that the national 
road might be accomplished; and for many years he 
agitated persistently for his project. 

The annexation of Oregon and the Southwest, 
coming in the years immediately after the commence- 
ment of Whitney^s advocacy, gave new point to 
arguments for the railway and introduced the sec- 
tional element. So long as Oregon constituted the 
whole American frontage on the Pacific it was idle 
to debate railway routes south of South Pass. This 
was the only known, practicable route, and it was 
the course recommended by all the projectors, down 
to Whitney. But with California won, the other 
trails by El Paso and Santa Fe came into considera- 
tion and at once tempted the South to make the 
railway tributary to its own interests. 

Chief among the politicians who fell in with the 
growing railway movement was Senator Benton, who 



194 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

tried to place himself at its head. ^'The man is 
alive, full grown, and is listening to what I say 
(without believing it perhaps)," he declared in Oc- 
tober, 1844, ^' who will yet see the Asiatic commerce 
traversing the North Pacific Ocean — entering the 
Oregon River — climbing the western slopes of the 
Rocky Mountains — issuing from its gorges — and 
spreading its fertilizing streams over our wide-ex- 
tended Union!" After this date there was no subject 
closer to his interest than the railway, and his advo- 
cacy was constant. His last word in the Senate was 
concerning it. In 1849 he carried off its feet the 
St. Louis railroad convention with his eloquent 
appeal for a central route: ^^Let us make the iron 
road, and make it from sea to sea — States and 
individuals making it east of the Mississippi, the 
nation making it west. Let us . . . rise above 
everything sectional, personal, local. Let us . . . 
build the great road . . . which shall be adorned 
with . . . the colossal statue of the great Colum- 
bus — whose design it accomplishes, hewn from a 
granite mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, 
overlooking the road . . . pointing with outstretched 
arm to the western horizon and saying to the flying 
passengers, ^ There is the East, there is India.'" 

By 1850 it was common knowledge that a railroad 
could be built along the Platte route, and it was 
believed that the mountains could be penetrated in 
several other places, but the process of surveying with 
reference to a particular railway had not yet been 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 195 

begun. It is possible and perhaps instructive to make 
a rough grouping, in two classes divided by the year 
1842, of the explorations before 1853. So late as 
Fremont's day it was not generally known whether a 
great river entered the Pacific between the Columbia 
and the Colorado. Prior to 1842 the explorations 
are to be regarded as '^incidents" and ^^adventures'' 
in more or less unknown countries. The narratives 
were popular rather than scientific, representing the 
experiences of parties surveying boundary lines or 
locating wagon roads, of troops marching to remote 
posts or chastising Indians, of missionaries and casual 
explorers. In the aggregate they had contributed 
a large mass of detailed but unorganized information 
concerning the country where the continental rail- 
way must run. But Lieutenant Fremont, in 1842, 
commenced the effort by the United States to acquire 
accurate and comprehensive knowledge of the West. 
In 1842, 1843, and 1845 Fremont conducted the three 
Rocky Mountain expeditions which established him 
for life as a popular hero. The map, drawn by 
Charles Preuss for his second expedition, confined 
itself in strict scientific fashion to the facts actually 
observed, and in skill of execution was perhaps the 
best map made before 1853. The individual expe- 
ditions which in the later forties filled in the details 
of portions of the Fremont map are too numerous 
for mention. At least twenty-five occurred before 
1853, all serving to extend both general and particu- 
lar knowledge of the West. To these was added a 



196 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

great mass of popular books, prepared by emigrants 
and travellers. By 1853 there was good, unscientific 
knowledge of nearly all the West, and accurate 
information concerning some portions of it. The 
railroad enthusiasts could tell the general direction 
in which the roads must run, but no road could well 
be located without a more comprehensive survey 
than had yet been made. 

The agitation of the Pacific railway idea was 
founded almost exclusively upon general and in- 
accurate knowledge of the West. The exact location 
of the line was naturally left for the professional 
civil engineer, its popular advocate contented him- 
self with general principles. Frequently these were 
sufficient, yet, as in the case of Benton, misinforma- 
tion led to the waste of strength upon routes un- 
questionably bad. But there was slight danger of 
the United States being led into an unwise route, 
since in the diversity of routes suggested there was 
deadlock. Until after 1850, in proportion as the idea 
was received with unanimity, the routes were fought 
with increasing bitterness. Whitney was shelved 
in 1852 when the choice of routes had become more 
important than the method of construction. 

In 1852-1853 Congress worked upon one of the 
many bills to construct the much-desired railway to 
the Pacific. It was discovered that an absolute 
majority in favor of the work existed, but the enemies 
of the measure, virulent in proportion as they were 
in the minority, were able to sow well-fertilized 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 197 

dissent. They admitted and gloried in the intrigue 
which enabled them to command through the time- 
honored method of division. They defeated the road 
in this Congress. But when the army appropria- 
tion bill came along in February, 1853, Senator 
Gwin asked for an amendment for a survey. He 
doubted the wisdom of a survey, since, "ii any route 
is reported to this body as the best, those that may 
be rejected will always go against the one selected." 
But he admitted himself to be as a drowning man 
who '^will catch at straws," and begged that $150,000 
be allowed to the President for a survey of the best 
routes from the Mississippi to the Pacific, the survey 
to be conducted by the Corps of Topographical En- 
gineers of the regular army. To a non-committal 
measure like this the opposition could make slight 
resistance. The Senate, by a vote of 31 to 16, added 
this amendment to the army appropriation bill, 
while the House concurred in nearly the same pro- 
portion. The first positive official act towards the 
construction of the road was here taken. 

Under the orders of Jefferson Davis, Secretary of 
War, well-organized exploring parties took to the 
field in the spring of 1853. Farthest north, Isaac 
I. Stevens, bound for his post as first governor of 
Washington territory, conducted a line of survey to 
the Pacific between the parallels of 47° and 49°, 
north latitude. South of the Stevens survey, four 
other lines were worked out. Near the parallels of 
41° and 42°, the old South Pass route was again 



198 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

examined. Fremont's favorite line, between 38° 
and 39°, received consideration. A thirty-fifth paral- 
lel route was examined in great detail, while on this 
and another along the thirty-second parallel the 
most friendly attentions of the War Department 
were lavished. The second and third routes had 
few important friends. Governor Stevens, because 
he was a first-rate fighter, secured full space for the 
survey in his charge. But the thirty-second and 
thirty-fifth parallel routes were those which were 
expected to make good. 

Governor Stevens left Washington on May 9, 
1853, for St. Louis, where he made arrangements with 
the American Fur Company to transport a large part 
of his supplies by river to Fort Union. From St. 
Louis he ascended the Mississippi by steamer to 
St. Paul, near which city Camp Pierce, his first 
organized camp, had been established. Here he 
issued his instructions and worked into shape his 
party, — to say nothing of his 172 half-broken mules. 
'^Not a single full team of broken animals could be 
selected, and well broken riding animals were essen- 
tial, for most of the gentlemen of the scientific corps 
were unaccustomed to riding." One of the engineers 
dislocated a shoulder before he conquered his steed. 

The party assigned to Governor Stevens's command 
was recruited with reference to the varied demands 
of a general exploring and scientific reconnaissance. 
Besides enlisted men and laborers, it included engi- 
neers, a topographer, an artist, a surgeon and natu- 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 199 

ralist, an astronomer, a meteorologist, and a geologist. 
Its two large volumes of report include elaborate 
illustrations and appendices on botany and seven 
different varieties of zoology in addition to the geo- 
graphical details required for the railway. 

The expedition, in its various branches, attacked 
the northernmost route simultaneously in several 
places. Governor Stevens led the eastern division 
from St. Paul. A small body of his men, with much 
of the supplies, were sent up the Missouri in the 
American Fur Company's boat to Fort Union, there 
to make local observations and await the arrival of 
the governor. United there the party continued 
overland to Fort Benton and the mountains. Six 
years later than this it would have been possible to 
ascend by boat all the way to Fort Benton, but as 
yet no steamer had gone much above Fort Union. 
From the Pacific end the second main division oper- 
ated. Governor Stevens secured the recall of Cap- 
tain George B. McClellan from duty in Texas, and 
his detail in command of a corps which was to pro- 
ceed to the mouth of the Columbia River and start 
an eastward survey. In advance of McClellan, 
Lieutenant Saxton was to hurry on to erect a 
supply depot in the Bitter Root Valley, and then 
to cross the divide and make a junction with the 
main party. 

From Governor Stevens's reports it would seem 
that his survey was a triumphal progress. To his 
threefold capacities as commander, governor, and 



200 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Indian superintendent, nature had added a magni- 
fying eye and an unrestrained enthusiasm. No 
formal expedition had traversed his route since the 
day of Lewis and Clark. The Indians could still be 
impressed by the physical appearance of the whites. 
His vanity led him at each success or escape from 
accident to congratulate himself on the antecedent 
wisdom which had warded off the danger. But 
withal, his report was thorough and his party was 
loyal. The voyageurs whom he had engaged received 
his special praise. ^^They are thorough woodsmen 
and just the men for prairie life also, going into the 
water as pleasantly as a spaniel, and remaining 
there as long as needed." 

Across the undulating fertile plains the party 
advanced from St. Paul with little difficulty. Its 
draught animals steadily improved in health and 
strength. The Indians were friendly and honest. 
^^My father," said Old Crane of the Assiniboin, 
'^our hearts are good; we are poor and have not 
much. . . . Our good father has told us about this 
road. I do not see how it will benefit us, and I fear 
my people will be driven from these plains before 
the white men." In fifty-five days Fort Union was 
reached. Here the American Fur Company main- 
tained an extensive post in a stockade 250 feet square, 
and carried on a large trade with 'Hhe Assiniboines, 
the Gros Ventres, the Crows, and other migratory 
bands of Indians." At Fort Union, Alexander 
Culbertson, the agent, became the guide of the 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 201 

party, which proceeded west on August 10. From 
Fort Union it was nearly 400 miles to Fort Benton, 
which then stood on the left bank of the Missouri, 
some eighteen miles below the falls. The country, 
though less friendly than that east of the Missouri, 
offered little difficulty to the party, which covered the 
distance in three weeks. A week later, September 8, 
a party sent on from Fort Benton met Lieutenant 
Saxton coming east. ; ' 

The chief problems of the Stevens survey lay west 
of Fort Benton, in the passes of the continental di- 
vide. Lieutenant Saxton had left Vancouver early 
in July, crossed the Cascades with difficulty, and 
started up the Columbia from the Dalles on July 18. 
He reached Fort Walla Walla on the 27th, and pro- 
ceeded thence with a half-breed guide through the 
country of the Spokan and the Coeur d'Alene. 
Crossing the Snake, he broke his onl}^ mercurial 
barometer and was forced thereafter to rely on his 
aneroid. Deviating to the north, he crossed Lake 
Pend d'Oreille on August 10, and reached St. Mary's 
village, in the Bitter Root Valley, on August 28. St. 
Mary's village, among the Flatheads, had been es- 
tablished by the Jesuit fathers, and had advanced 
considerably, as Indian civilization went. Here 
Saxton erected his supply depot, from which he ad- 
vanced with a smaller escort to join the main party. 
Always, even in the heart of the mountains, the coun- 
try exceeded his expectations. '^ Nature seemed to 
have intended it for the great highway across the 



202 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

continent, and it appeared to offer but little obstruc- 
tion to the passage of a railroad." 

Acting on Saxton's advice, Governor Stevens re- 
duced his party at Fort Benton, stored much of his 
government property there, and started west with a 
pack train, for the sake of greater speed. He moved 
on September 22, anxious lest snow should catch 
him in the mountains. At Fort Benton he left a 
detachment to make meteorological observations 
during the winter. Among the Flatheads he left 
another under Lieutenant Mullan. On October 7 
he hurried on again from the Bitter Root Valley for 
Walla Walla. On the 19th he met McClellan's 
party, which had been spending a difficult season in 
the passes of the Cascade range. Because of over- 
cautious advice which McClellan here gave him, 
and since his animals were tired out with the sum- 
mer's hardships, he practically ended his survey for 
1853 at this point. He pushed on down the Colum- 
bia to Olympia and his new territory. 

The energy of Governor Stevens enabled him to 
make one of the first of the Pacific railway reports. 
His was the only survey from the Mississippi to the 
ocean under a single commander. Dated June 30, 
1854, it occupies 651 pages of Volume I of the com- 
piled reports. In 1859 he submitted his ^'narrative 
and final report" which the Senate ordered Secretary 
of War, John B. Floyd, to communicate to it in Febru- 
ary of that year. This document is printed as sup- 
plement to Volume I, but really consists of two large 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 203 

volumes which are commonly bound together as 
Volume XII of the series. Like the other volumes 
of the reports, his are filled with lithographs and en- 
gravings of fauna, flora, and topography. 

The forty-second parallel route was surveyed by 
Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith, of the third artillery, in 
the summer of 1854. East of Fort Bridger, the War 
Department felt it unnecessary to make a special 
survey, since Fremont had traversed and described 
the country several times and Stansbury had sur- 
veyed it carefully as recently as 1849-1850. At 
the beginning of his campaign Beckwith was at Salt 
Lake. During April he visited the Green River 
Valley and Fort Bridger, proving by his surveys the 
entire practicability of railway construction here. 
In May he skirted the south end of Great Salt Lake 
and passed along the Humboldt to the Sacramento 
Valley. He had no important adventures and was 
impressed most by the squalor of the digger Indians, 
whose grass-covered, beehive-shaped ^^wick-ey-ups'^ 
were frequently seen. As his band approached the 
Indians would fearfully cache their belongings in 
the undergrowth. In the morning ^4t was indeed 
a novel and ludicrous sight of wretchedness to see 
them approach their bush and attempt, slyly (for 
they still tried to conceal from me what they were 
about), to repossess themselves of their treasures, 
one bringing out a piece of old buckskin, a couple of 
feet square, smoked, greasy, and torn; another a 
half dozen rabbit-skins in an equally filthy condi- 



204 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

tion, sewed together, which he would swing over his 
shoulders by a string — his only blanket or clothing; 
while a third brought out a blue string, which he 
girded about him and walked away in full dress — 
one of the lords of the soil." It needed no special 
emphasis in Beckwith's report to prove that a rail- 
way could follow this middle route, since thousands 
of emigrants had a personal knowledge of its condi- 
tions. 

Beckwith, who started his forty-second parallel 
survey from Salt Lake City, had reached that point 
as one of the officers in Gunnison's unfortunate 
party. Captain J. W. Gunnison had followed 
Governor Stevens into St. Louis in 1853. His field 
of exploration, the route of 38°-39°, was by no means 
new to him since he had been to Utah with Stansbury 
in 1849 and 1850, and had already written one of 
the best books upon the Mormon settlement. He 
carried his party up the Missouri to a fitting-out 
camp just below the mouth of the Kansas River, 
five miles from Westport. Like other commanders 
he spent much time at the start in ^^ breaking in wild 
mules," with which he advanced in rain and mud 
on June 23. For more than two weeks his party 
moved in parallel columns along the Santa Fe road 
and the Smok}^ Hill fork of the Kansas. Near 
Walnut creek on the Santa Fe road they united, and 
soon were following the Arkansas River towards the 
mountains. At Fort Atkinson they found a horde 
of the plains Indians waiting for Major Fitzpatrick 







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THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 205 

to make a treaty with them. Always their observa- 
tions were taken with regularity. One day Captain 
Gunnison spent in vain efforts to secure specimens 
of the elusive prairie dog. On August 1, when they 
were ready to leave the Arkansas and plunge south- 
west into the Sangre de Cristo range, they were 
gratified ^^by a clear and beautiful view of the Span- 
ish Peaks." 

This thirty-ninth parallel route, which had been a 
favorite with Fremont, crossed the divide near the 
head of the Rio Grande. Its grades, which were 
difficult and steep at best, followed the Huerfano 
Valley and Cochetopa Pass. Across the pass, 
Gunnison began his descent of the arid alkali valley 
of the Uncompahgre, — a valley to-day about to 
blossom as the rose because of the irrigation canal 
and tunnel bringing to it the waters of the neighbor- 
ing Gunnison River. With heavy labor, intense heat, 
and weakening teams, Gunnison struggled on through 
September and October towards Salt Lake in Utah 
territory. Near Sevier Lake he lost his life. Before 
daybreak, on October 26, he and a small detachment 
of men were surprised by a band of young Paiute. 
When the rest of his party hurried up to the 
rescue, they found his body '^pierced with fifteen 
arrows," and seven of his men lying dead around 
him. Beckwith, who succeeded to the command, 
led the remainder of the party to Salt Lake City, 
where public opinion was ready to charge the Mor- 
mons with the murder. Beckwith believed this to be 



206 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

entirely false, and made use of the friendly assistance 
of Brigham Young, who persuaded the chiefs of the 
tribe to return the instruments and records which 
had been stolen from the party. 

The route surveyed by Captain Gunnison passed 
around the northern end of the ravine of the Colorado 
River, which almost completely separates the South- 
west from the United States. Farther south, within 
the United States, were only two available points 
at which railways could cross the canon, at Fort 
Yuma and near the Mojave River. Towards these 
crossings the thirty-fifth and thirty-second parallel 
surveys were directed. 

Second only to Governor Stevens's in its extent 
was the exploration conducted by Lieutenant A. W. 
Whipple from Fort Smith on the Arkansas to Los 
Angeles along the thirty-fifth parallel. Like that 
of Governor Stevens this route was not the channel 
of any regular traffic, although later it was to have 
some share in the organized overland commerce. 
Here also was found a line that contained only two 
or three serious obstacles to be overcome. Whipple's 
instructions planned for him to begin his observa- 
tions at the Mississippi, but he believed that the 
navigable Arkansas River and the railways already 
projected in that state made it needless to commence 
farther east than Fort Smith, on the edge of the 
Indian Country. He began his survey on July 
14, 1853. His westward march was for two months 
up the right bank of the Canadian River, as it trav- 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 207 

ersed the Choctaw and Chickasaw reserves, to the 
hundredth meridian, where it emerged from the pan- 
handle of Texas, and across the panhandle into New 
Mexico. After crossing the upper waters of the 
Rio Pecos he reached the Rio Grande at Albuquerque, 
where his party tarried for a month or more, working 
over their observations, making local explorations, 
and sending back to Washington an account of their 
proceedings thus far. Towards the middle of Novem- 
ber they started on toward the Colorado Chiquita 
and the Bill Williams Fork, through "a, region over 
which no white man is supposed to have passed/' 
The severest difficulties of the trip were found near 
the valley of the Colorado River, which was entered 
at the junction of the Bill Williams Fork and followed 
north for several days. A crossing here was made 
near the supposed mouth of the Mojave River at a 
place where porphyritic and trap dykes, outcropping, 
gave rise to the name of the Needles. The river 
was crossed February 27, 1854, three weeks before 
the party reached Los Angeles. 

South of the route of Lieutenant Whipple, the 
thirty-second parallel survey was run to the Fort 
Yuma crossing of the Colorado River. No attempt 
was made in this case at a comprehensive survey 
under a single leader. Instead, the section from the 
Rio Grande at El Paso to the Red River at Preston, 
Texas, was run by John Pope, brevet captain in the 
topographical engineers, in the spring of 1854. 
Lieutenant J. G. Parke carried the line at the same 



208 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

time from the Pimas villages on the Gila to the Rio 
Grande. West of the Pimas villages to the Colorado, 
a reconnoissance made by Lieutenant-colonel Emory 
in 1847 was drawn upon. The lines in California 
were surveyed by yet a different party. Here again 
an easy route was discovered to exist. Within the 
states of California and Oregon various connecting 
lines were surveyed by parties under Lieutenant 
R. S. Williamson in 1855. 

The evidence accumulated by the Pacific railway 
surveys began to pour in upon the War Department 
in the spring of 1854. Partial reports at first, elabo- 
rate and minute scientific articles following later, made 
up a series which by the close of the decade filled the 
twelve enormous volumes of the published papers. 
Rarely have efforts so great accomplished so little 
in the way of actual contribution to knowledge. The 
chief importance of the surveys was in proving by 
scientific observation what was already a common- 
place among laymen — that the continent was 
traversable in many places, and that the incidental 
problems of railway construction were in finance 
rather than in engineering. The engineers stood 
ready to build the road any time and almost any- 
where. 

The Secretary of War submitted to Congress the 
first instalment of his report under the resolution 
of March 3, 1853, on February 27, 1855. As yet the 
labors of compilation and examination of the field 
manuscripts were by no means completed, but he 



THE ENGINEERS' FRONTIER 209 

was able to make general statements about the 
probability of success. At five points the continen- 
tal divide had been crossed; over four of these rail- 
ways were entirely practicable, although the shortest 
of the routes to San Francisco ran by the one pass, 
Cochetopa, where it would be unreasonable to con- 
struct a road. 

From the routes surveyed. Secretary Davis recom- 
mended one as ^Hhe most practicable and economical 
route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the 
Pacific Ocean. '^ In all cases cost, speed of con- 
struction, and ease in operation needed to be ascer- 
tained and compared. The estimates guessed at by 
the parties in the field, and revised by the War De- 
partment, pointed to the southernmost as. the most 
desirable route. To reach this conclusion it was 
necessary to accuse Governor Stevens of underesti- 
mating the cost of labor along his northern line; 
but the figures as taken were conclusive. On this 
thirty-second parallel route, declared the Secretary 
of War, ^Hhe progress of the work will be regulated 
chiefly by the speed with which cross-ties and rails 
can be delivered and laid. . . . The few difficult 
points . . . would delay the work but an inconsider- 
able period. . . . The climate on this route is such 
as to cause less interruption to the work than on any 
other route. Not only is this the shortest and least 
costly route to the Pacific, but it is the shortest and 
cheapest route to San Francisco, the greatest com- 
mercial city on our western coast; while the aggre- 



210 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

gate length of railroad lines connecting it at its eastern 
terminus with the Atlantic and Gulf seaports is less 
than the aggregate connection with any other route.'' 

The Pacific railway surveys had been ordered as 
the only step which Congress in its situation of dead- 
lock could take. Senator Gwin had long ago told 
his fears that the advocates of the disappointed routes 
would unite to hinder the fortunate one. To the 
South, as to Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, the 
thirty-second parallel route was satisfactory; but 
there was as little chance of building a railway as 
there had been in 1850. In days to come, discussion 
of railways might be founded upon facts rather than 
hopes and fears, but either unanimity or compromise 
was in a fairly remote future. The overland traffic, 
which was assuming great volume as the surveys 
progressed, had yet nearly fifteen years before the 
railway should drive it out of existence. And no 
railway could even be started before war had 
removed one of the contesting sections from the floor 
of Congress. 

Yet in the years since Asa Whitney had begun his 
agitation the railways of the East had constantly 
expanded. The first bridge to cross the Mississippi 
was under construction when Davis reported in 1855. 
The Illinois Central was opened in 1856. When the 
Civil War began, the railway frontier had become 
coterminous with the agricultural frontier, and both 
were ready to span the gap which separated them 
from the Pacific. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 

It has been pointed out by Davis in his history of 
the Union Pacific Railroad that the period of agita- 
tion was approaching probable success when the latter 
was deferred because of the rivalry of sections and 
localities into which the scheme was thrown. From 
about 1850 until 1853 it indeed seemed likely that 
the road would be built just so soon as the terminus 
could be agreed upon. To be sure, there was keen 
rivalry over this ; yet the rivalry did not go beyond 
local jealousies and might readily be compromised. 
After the reports of the surveys were completed and 
presented to Congress the problem took on a new as- 
pect which promised postponement until a far greater 
question could be solved. Slavery and the Pacific 
railroad are concrete illustrations of the two horns 
of the national dilemma. 

As a national project, the railway raised the prob- 
lem of its construction under national auspices. 
Was the United States, or should it become, a nation 
competent to undertake the work ? With no hesi- 
tation, many of the advocates of the measure an- 
swered yes. Yet even among the friends of the 
road the query frequently evoked the other answer. 

211 



212 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Slavery had already taken its place as an institution 
peculiar to a single section. Its defence and per- 
petuation depended largely upon proving the con- 
trary of the proposition that the Pacific railroad 
demanded. For the purposes of slavery defence the 
United States must remain a mere federation, limited 
in powers and lacking in the attributes of sovereignty 
and nationality. Looking back upon this struggle, 
with half a century gone by, it becomes clear that the 
final answer upon both questions, slavery and rail- 
way, had to be postponed until the more fundamental 
question of federal character had been worked out. 
The antitheses were clear, even as Lincoln saw them 
in 1858. Slavery and localism on the one hand, 
railway and nationalism on the other, were engaged 
in a vital struggle for recognition. Together they 
were incompatible. One or the other must sur- 
vive alone. Lincoln saw a portion of the problem, 
and he sketched the answer: ^'I do not expect the 
Union to be dissolved, — I do not expect the house 
to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided." 
The stages of the Pacific railroad movement are 
clearly marked through all these squabbles. Agi- 
tation came first, until conviction and acceptance 
were general. This was the era of Asa Whitney. 
Reconnoissance and survey followed, in a decade 
covering approximately 1847-1857. Organization 
came last, beginning in tentative schemes which 
counted for little, passing through a long series of 
intricate debates in Congress, and being merged in 



THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 213 

the larger question of nationality, but culminating 
finally in the first Pacific railroad bills of 1862 and 
1864. 

When Congress began its session of 1853-1854, 
most of the surveying parties contemplated by the 
act of the previous March were still in the field. The 
reports ordered were not yet available, and Congress 
recognized the inexpediency of proceeding farther 
without the facts. It is notable, however, that both 
houses at this time created select committees to 
consider propositions for a railway. Both of these 
committees reported bills, but neither received 
sanction even in the house of its friends. The next 
session, 1854-1855, saw the great struggle between 
Douglas and Benton. 

Stephen A. Douglas, who had triumphantly carried 
through his Kansas-Nebraska bill in the preceding 
May, started a railway bill in the Senate in 1855. 
As finally considered and passed by the Senate, his 
bill provided for three railroads : a Northern Pacific, 
from the western border of Wisconsin to Puget Sound ; 
a Southern Pacific, from the western border of Texas 
to the Pacific ; and a Central Pacific, from Missouri 
or Iowa to San Francisco. They were to be con- 
structed by private parties under contracts to be let 
jointly by the Secretaries of War and Interior and 
the Postmaster-general. Ultimately they were to 
become the property of the United States and the 
states through which they passed. The House of 
Representatives, led by Benton in the interests of a 



214 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

central road, declined to pass the Douglas measure. 
Before its final rejection, it was amended to please 
Benton and his allies by the restriction to a single 
trunk line from San Francisco, with eastern branches 
diverging to Lake Superior, Missouri or Iowa, and 
Memphis. 

During the two years following the rejection of the 
Douglas scheme by the allied malcontents, the select 
committees on the Pacific railways had few proposi- 
tions to consider, while Congress paid little attention 
to the general matter. Absorbing interest in politics, 
the new Republican party, and the campaign of 1856 
were responsible for part of the neglect. The con- 
viction of the dominant Democrats that the nation 
had no power to perform the task was respon- 
sible for more. The transition from a question of 
selfish localism to one of national policy which 
should require the whole strength of the nation for 
its solution was under way. The northern friends of 
the railway were disheartened by the southern ten- 
dencies of the Democratic administration which 
lasted till 1861. Jefferson Davis, as Secretary of 
War, was followed by Floyd, of Virginia, who believed 
with his predecessor that the southern was the most 
eligible route. At the same time, Aaron V. Brown, 
of Tennessee, Postmaster-general, was awarding the 
postal contract for an overland mail to Butter- 
field's southern route in spite of the fact that Con- 
gress had probably intended the central route to be 
employed. 



THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 215 

Between 1857 and 1861 the debates of Congress 
show the difficulties under which the railroad la- 
bored. Many bills were started, but few could get 
through the committees. In 1859 the Senate passed 
a bill. In 1860 the House passed one which the 
Senate amended to death. In the session of 1860- 
1861 its serious consideration was crowded out by 
the incipiency of war. 

Through the long years of debate over the organ- 
ization of the road, the nature of its management 
and the nature of its governmental aid were much 
in evidence. Save only the Cumberland road the 
United States had undertaken no such scheme, 
while the Cumberland road, vastly less in magnitude 
than this, had raised enough constitutional difficul- 
ties to last a generation. That there must be some 
connection between the road and the public lands 
had been seen even before Whitney commenced 
his advocacy. The nature of that connection was 
worked out incidentally to other movements while 
the Whitney scheme was under fire. 

The policy of granting lands in aid of improvements 
in transportation had been hinted at as far back as 
the admission of Ohio, but it had not received its full 
development until the railroad period began. To 
some extent, in the thirties and forties, public lands 
had been allotted to the states to aid in canal 
building, but when the railroad promoters started 
their campaign in the latter decade, a new era in the 
history of the public domain was commenced. The 



216 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

definitive fight over the issue of land grants for rail- 
ways took place in connection with the Illinois 
Central and Mobile and Ohio scheme in the years 
from 1847 to 1850. 

The demand for a central railroad in Illinois made 
its appearance before the panic of 1837. The north- 
west states were now building their own railroads, 
and this enterprise was designed to connect the 
Galena lead country with the junction of the Ohio 
and Mississippi by a road running parallel to the 
Mississippi through the whole length of the state of 
Illinois. Private railways in the Northwest ran 
naturally from east to west, seeking termini on the 
Mississippi and at the Alleghany crossings. This 
one was to intersect all the horizontal roads, making 
useful connections everywhere. But it traversed a 
country where yet the prairie hen held uncontested 
sway. There was little population or freight to justify 
it, and hence the project, though it guised itself in at 
least three different corporate garments before 1845, 
failed of success. No one of the multitude of trans- 
verse railways, on whose junctions it had counted, 
crossed its right-of-way before 1850. La Salle, 
Galena, and Jonesboro were the only villages on its 
line worth marking on a large-scale map, while 
Chicago was yet under forty thousand in population. 

Men who in the following decade led the Pacific 
railway agitation promoted the Illinois Central idea 
in the years immediately preceding 1850. Both 
Breese and Douglas of Illinois claimed the parentage 



THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 217 

of the bill which eventually passed Congress in 1850, 
and by opening the way to public aid for railway 
transportation commenced the period of the land- 
grant railroads. Already in some of the canal grants 
the method of aid had been outlined, alternate sec- 
tions of land along the line of the canal being con- 
veyed to the company to aid it in its work. The 
theory underlying the granting of alternate sections 
in the famihar checker-board fashion was that the 
public lands, while inaccessible, had slight value, but 
once reached by communication the alternate sec- 
tions reserved by the United States would bring a 
higher price than the whole would have done without 
the canal, while the construction company would be 
aided without expense to any one. The application 
of this principle to railroads came rather slowly in a 
Congress somewhat disturbed by a doubt as to its 
power to devote the public resources to internal im- 
provements. The sectional character of the Illinois 
Central railway was against it until its promoters en- 
larged the scheme into a Lake-to-Gulf railway by 
including plans for a continuation to Mobile from 
the Ohio. With southern aid thus enticed to its 
support, the bill became a law in 1850. By its terms, 
the alternate sections of land in a strip ten miles 
wide were given to the interested states to be used 
for the construction of the Illinois Central and the 
Mobile and Ohio. The grants were made directly 
to the states because of constitutional objections to 
construction within a state without its consent and 



218 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

approval. It was twelve years before Congress was 
ready to give the lands directly to the railroad com- 
pany. 

The decade following the Illinois Central grant 
was crowded with applications from other states for 
grants upon the same terms. In this period of specu- 
lative construction before the panic of 1857, every 
western state wanted all the aid it could get. In a 
single session seven states asked for nearly fourteen 
million acres of land, while before 1857 some five 
thousand miles of railway had been aided by land 
grants. 

When Asa Whitney began his agitation for the 
Pacific railway, he asked for a huge land grant, but 
the machinery and methods of the grants had not 
yet become familiar to Congress. During the sub- 
sequent fifteen years of agitation and survey the 
method was worked out, so that when political con- 
ditions made it possible to build the road, there had 
ceased to be great difficulty in connection with its 
subsidy. 

The sectional problem, which had reached its full 
development in Congress by 1857, prevented any 
action in the interest of a Pacific railway so long as it 
should remain unchanged. As the bickerings wi- 
dened into war, the railway still remained a practical 
impossibility. But after war had removed from 
Congress the representatives of the southern states 
the way was cleared for action. When Congress 
met in its war session of July, 1861, all agitation in 



THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 219 

favor of southern routes was silenced by disunion. 
It remained only to choose among the routes lying 
north of the thirty-fifth parallel, and to authorize 
the construction along one of them of the railway 
which all admitted to be possible of construction, 
and to which military need in preservation of the 
union had now added an imperative quality. 

The summer session of 1861 revived the bills for a 
Pacific railway, and handed them over to the regular 
session of 1861-1862 as unfinished business. In the 
lobby at this later session was Theodore D. Judah, 
a young graduate of the Troy Polytechnic, who gave 
powerful aid to the final settlement of route and 
means. Judah had come east in the autumn in 
company with one of the newly elected California 
representatives. During the long sea voyage he 
had drilled into his companion, who happily was later 
appointed to the Pacific Railroad Committee, all of 
the elaborate knowledge of the railway problem 
which he had acquired in his advocacy of the railway 
on the Pacific Coast. California had begun the con- 
struction of local railways several years before the 
war broke out; a Pacific railway was her constant 
need and prayer. Her own corporations were 
planned with reference to the time when tracks from 
the East should cross her border and find her local 
creations waiting for connections with them. 

When the advent of war promised an early ma- 
turity for the scheme, a few Californians organized 
the most significant of the California railways, the 



220 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Central Pacific. On June 28, 1861, this company 
was incorporated, having for its leading spirits Judah, 
its chief engineer, and Collis Potter Huntington, 
Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Leland Stan- 
ford, soon to be governor of the state. Its founders 
were all men of moderate means, but they had the best 
of that foresight and initiative in which the frontier 
was rich. Diligently through the summer of 1861 
Judah prospected for routes across the mountains 
into Utah territory, where the new silver fields 
around Carson indicated the probable course of a 
route. With his plans and profiles, he hurried on 
to Washington in the fall to aid in the quick settle- 
ment of the long-debated question. 

Judah' s interest in a special California road coin- 
cided well with the needs and desires of Congress. 
Already various bills were in the hands of the select 
committees of both houses. The southern interest 
was gone. The only remaining rivalries were 
among St. Louis, Chicago, and the new Minnesota; 
while the first of these was tainted by the doubtful 
loyalty of Missouri, and the last was embarrassed 
by the newness of its territory and its lack of popu- 
lation. The Sioux were yet in control of much 
of the country beyond St. Paul. Out of this rivalry 
Chicago and a central route could emerge trium- 
phant. 

The spring of 1862 witnessed a long debate over a 
Union Pacific railroad to meet the new military needs 
of the United States as well as to satisfy the old eco- 



THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 221 

nomic necessities. Why it was called ''Union" is 
somewhat in doubt. Bancroft thinks its name was 
descriptive of the various local roads which were 
bound together in the single continental scheme. 
Davis, on the contrary, is inclined to believe that the 
name was in contrast to the ''Disunion" route of the 
thirty-second parallel, since the route chosen was 
to run entirely through loyal territory. Whatever 
the reason, however, the Union Pacific Railroad Com- 
pany was incorporated on the 1st of July, 1862. 

Under the act of incorporation a continental rail- 
way was to be constructed by several companies. 
Within the limits of California, the Central Pacific 
of California, already organized and well managed, 
was to have the privilege. Between the boundary 
line of California and Nevada and the hundredth 
meridian, the new Union Pacific was to be the con- 
structing company. On the hundredth meridian, at 
some point between the Republican River in Kansas 
and the Platte River in Nebraska, radiating lines 
were to advance to various eastern frontier points, 
somewhat after the fashion of Benton^s bill of 1855. 
Thus the Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western of 
Kansas was authorized to connect this point with 
the Missouri River, south of the mouth of the Kansas, 
with a branch to Atchison and St. Joseph in connec- 
tion with the Hannibal and St. Joseph of Missouri. 
The Union Pacific itself was required to build two 
more connections; one to run from the hundredth 
meridian to some point on the west boundary of 



222 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Iowa, to be fixed by the President of the United 
States, and another to Sioux City, Iowa, whenever 
a Hne from the east should reach that place. 

The aid offered for the construction of these hnes 
was more generous than any previously provided by 
Congress. In the first place, the roads were entitled 
to a right-of-way four hundred feet wide, with per- 
mission to take material for construction from ad- 
jacent parts of the public domain. Secondly, the 
roads were to receive ten sections of land for each mile 
of track on the familiar alternate section principle. 
Finally, the United States was to lend to the roads 
bonds to the amount of $16,000 per mile, on the 
level, $32,000 in the foothills, and $48,000 in 
the mountains, to facilitate construction. If not 
completed and open by 1876, the whole line was to be 
forfeited to the United States. If completed, the 
loan of bonds was to be repaid out of subsequent 
earnings. 

The Central Pacific of California was prompt in its 
acceptance of the terms of the act of July 1, 1862. 
It proceeded with its organization, broke ground at 
Sacramento on February 22, 1863, and had a few 
miles of track in operation before the next year closed. 
But the Union Pacific was slow. ^^ While fighting 
to retain eleven refractory states," wrote one irri- 
tated critic of the act, ^' the nation permitted itself 
to be cozened out of territory sufficient to form 
twelve new republics." Yet great as were the offered 
grants, eastern capital was reluctant to put life 



THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD 223 

into the new route across the plains. That it could 
ever pay, was seriously doubted. Chances for more 
certain and profitable investment in the East were 
frequent in the years of war-time prosperity. 
Although the railroad organized according to the 
terms of the law, subscribers to the stock of the Union 
Pacific were hard to find, and the road lay dormant 
for two more years until Congress revised its offer 
and increased its terms. 

In the session of 1863-1864 the general subject 
was again approached. Writes Davis, ^'The opin- 
ion was almost universal that additional legislation 
was needed to make the Act of 1862 effective, but the 
point where the limit of aid to patriotic capitalists 
should be set was difficult to determine." It was, 
and remained, the belief of the opponents of the bill 
now passed that 'lobbyists, male and female, . . . 
shysters and adventurers" had much to do with the 
success of the measure. In its most essential parts, 
the new bill of 1864 increased the degree of govern- 
ment aid to the companies. The land grant was 
doubled from ten sections per mile of track to 
twenty, and the road was allowed to borrow of the 
general public, on first mortgage bonds, money to the 
amount of the United States loan, which was re- 
duced by a self-denying ordinance to the status of a 
second mortgage. With these added inducements, 
the Union Pacific was finally begun. 

The project at last under way in 1864-1865, as 
Davis graphically pictures it, ''was thoroughly 



224 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

saturated and fairly dripping with the elements of 
adventure and romance." But he overstates his 
case when he goes onto remark that, "Before the 
building of the Pacific railway most of the wide 
expanse of territory west of the Missouri was terra 
incognita to the mass of Americans." For twenty 
years the railway had been under agitation; during 
the whole period population had crossed the great 
desert in increasing thousands; new states had 
banked up around its circumference, east, west, and 
south, while Kansas had been thrust into its middle ; 
new camps had dotted its interior. The great West 
was by no means unknown, but with the construction 
of the railway the American frontier entered upon 
its final phase. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 

That the fate of the outlying colonies of the 
United States should have aroused grave concerns 
at the beginning of the Civil War is not surprising. 
California and Oregon, Carson City, Denver, and 
the other mining camps were indeed on the same con- 
tinent with the contending factions, but the degree 
of their isolation was so great that they might as well 
have been separated by an ocean. Their inhabit- 
ants were more mixed than those of any portion of 
the older states, while in several of the communities 
the parties were so evenly divided as to raise doubts 
of the loyalty of the whole. ^^The malignant seces- 
sion element of this Territory," wrote Governor Gil- 
pin of Colorado, in October, 1861, ''has numbered 
7,500. It has been ably and secretly organized from 
November last, and requires extreme and extraor- 
dinary measures to meet and control its onslaught." 
At best, the western population was scanty and scat- 
tered over a frontier that still possessed its virgin 
character in most respects, though hovering at the 
edge of a period of transition. An English observer, 
hopeful for the worst, announced in the middle of the 
war that ''When that 'late lamented institution,' 

Q 225 



226 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the once United States, shall have passed away, and 
when, after this detestable and fratricidal war — 
the most disgraceful to human nature that civiliza- 
tion ever witnessed — the New World shall be re- 
stored to order and tranquility, our shikaris will not 
forget, that a single fortnight of comfortable travel 
suffices to transport them from fallow deer and 
pheasant shooting to the haunts of the bison and the 
grizzly bear. There is little chance of these animals 
being improved off' the Prairies, or even of their 
becoming rare during the lifetime of the present 
generation." The factors of most consequence in 
shaping the course of the great plains during the Civil 
War were those of mixed population, of ever present 
Indian danger, and of isolation. Though the plains 
had no effect upon the outcome of the war, the war 
furthered the work already under way of making 
known the West, clearing off the Indians, and pre- 
paring for future settlement. 

Like the rest of the United States the West was 
organized into military divisions for whose good order 
commanding officers were made responsible. At 
times the burden of military control fell chiefly 
upon the shoulders of territorial governors; again, 
special divisions were organized to meet particular 
needs, and generals of experience were detached from 
the main armies to direct movements in the West. 

Among the earliest of the episodes which drew 
attention to the western departments was the resig- 
nation of Albert Sidney Johnston, commanding the 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 227 

Department of the Pacific, and his rather spectacular 
flight across New Mexico, to join the confederate 
forces. From various directions, federal troops were 
sent to head him off, but he succeeded in evading all 
these and reaching safety at the Rio Grande by 
August 1. Here he could take an overland stage 
for the rest of his journey. The department which 
he abandoned included the whole West beyond 
the Rockies except Utah and present New Mexico. 
The country between the mountains and Missouri 
constituted the Department of the West. As the 
war advanced, new departments were created and 
boundaries were shifted at convenience. The De- 
partment of the Pacific remained an almost constant 
quantity throughout. A Department of the North- 
west, covering the territory of the Sioux Indians, 
was created in September, 1862, for the better de- 
fence of Minnesota and Wisconsin. To this com- 
mand Pope was assigned after his removal from the 
command of the Army of Virginia. Until the close 
of the war, when the great leaders were distributed 
and Sheridan received the Department of the South- 
west, no detail of equal importance was made to a 
western department. 

The fighting on the plains was rarely important 
enough to receive the dignified name of battle. 
There were plenty of marching and reconnoitring, 
much police duty along the trails, occasional skir- 
mishes with organized troops or guerrillas, aggressive 
campaigns against the Indians, and campaigns in 



228 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

defence of the agricultural frontier. But the armies 
so occupied were small and inexperienced. Com- 
monly regiments of local volunteers were used in 
these movements, or returned captives who were on 
parole to serve no more against the confederacy. 
Disciplined veterans were rarely to be found. As a 
consequence of the spasmodic character of the plains 
warfare and the inferior quality of the troops avail- 
able, western movements were often hampered and 
occasionally made useless. 

The struggle for the Rio Grande was as important 
as any of the military operations on the plains. At 
the beginning of the war the confederate forces 
seized the river around El Paso in time to make clear 
the way for Johnston as he hurried east. The 
Tucson country was occupied about the same time, 
so that in the fall of 1861 the confederate outposts 
were somewhat beyond the line of Texas and the 
Rio Grande, with New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado 
threatened. In December General Henry Hopkins 
Sibley assumed command of the confederate troops 
in the upper Rio Grande, while Colonel E. R. S. 
Canby, from Fort Craig, organized the resistance 
against further extension of the confederate power. 

Sibley's manifest intentions against the upper Rio 
Grande country, around Santa Fe and Albuquerque, 
aroused federal apprehensions in the winter of 1862. 
Governor Gilpin, at Denver, was already frightened 
at the danger within his own territory, and scarcely 
needed the order which came from Fort Leavenworth 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 229 

through General Hunter to reenforce Canby and 
look after the Colorado forts. He took responsibility 
easily, drew upon the federal treasury for funds 
which had not been allowed him, and shortly had 
the first Colorado, and a part of the second Colo- 
rado volunteers marching south to join the defensive 
columns. It is difficult to define this march in terms 
applicable to movements of war. At least one soldier 
in the second Colorado took with him two children 
and a wife, the last becoming the historian of the 
regiment and praising the chivalry of the soldiers, 
apparently oblivious of the fact that it is not a 
soldier's duty to be child's nurse to his comrade's 
family. But with wife and children, and the degree 
of individualism and insubordination which these 
imply, the Pike's Peak frontiersmen marched south 
to save the territory. Their patriotism at least was 
sure. 

As Sibley pushed up the river, passing Fort Craig 
and brushing aside a small force at Valverde, the 
Colorado forces reached Fort Union. Between 
Fort Union and Albuquerque, which Sibley entered 
easily, was the turning-point in the campaign. On 
March 26, 1862, Major J. M. Chivington had a suc- 
cessful skirmish at Johnson's ranch in Apache Canon, 
about twenty miles southeast of Santa Fe. Two 
days later, at Pigeon's ranch, a more decisive check 
was given to the confederates, but Colonel John P. 
Slough, senior volunteer in command, fell back upon 
Fort Union after the engagement, while the confed- 



230 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

erates were left free to occupy Santa Fe. A few days 
later Slough was deposed in the Colorado regiment, 
Chivington made colonel, and the advance on Santa 
Fe begun again. Sibley, now caught between Canby 
advancing from Fort Craig and Chivington coming 
through Apache Canon from Fort Union, evacuated 
Sante Fe on April 7, falling back to Albuquerque. 
The union troops, taking Santa Fe on April 12, hur- 
ried down the Rio Grande after Sibley in his final 
retreat. New Mexico was saved, and its security 
brought tranquillity to Colorado. The Colorado 
volunteers were back in Denver for the winter of 
1862-1863, but Gilpin, whose vigorous and indepen- 
dent support had made possible their campaign, had 
been dismissed from his post as governor. 

Along the frontier of struggle campaigns of this 
sort occurred from time to time, receiving little at- 
tention from the authorities who were directing 
weightier movements at the centre. Less formal 
than these, and more provocative of bitter feeling, 
were the attacks of guerrillas along the central fron- 
tier, — chiefly the Missouri border and eastern 
Kansas. Here the passions of the struggle for Kan- 
sas had not entirely cooled down, southern sympa- 
thizers were easily found, and communities divided 
among themselves were the more intense in their 
animosities. 

The Department of Kansas, where the most ag- 
gravated of these guerrilla conflicts occurred, was 
organized in November, 1861, under Major-general 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 231 

Hunter. From his headquarters at Leavenworth 
the commanding officer directed the affairs of Kansas, 
Nebraska, Dakota, Colorado, and 'Hhe Indian Ter- 
ritory west of Arkansas." The department was often 
shifted and reshaped to meet the needs of the fron- 
tier. A year later the Department of the Northwest 
was cut away from it, after the Sioux outbreak, its 
own name was changed to Missouri, and the states 
of Missouri and Arkansas were added to it. Still 
later it was modified again. But here throughout 
the war continued the troubles produced by the 
mixture of frontier and farm-lands, partisan whites 
and Indians. 

Bushwhacking, a composite of private murder 
and public attack, troubled the Kansas frontier from 
an early period of the war. It was easily aroused 
because of public animosities, and difficult to sup- 
press because its participating parties retired quickly 
into the body of peace-professing citizens. In it, 
asserted General Order No. 13, of June 26, 1862, 
''rebel fiends lay in wait for their prey to assassinate 
Union soldiers and citizens; it is therefore . . . espe- 
cially directed that whenever any of this class of 
offenders shall be captured, they shall not be treated 
as prisoners of war but be summarily tried by drum- 
head court-martial, and if proved guilty, be exe- 
cuted ... on the spot." 

In August, 1863, occurred Quantrill's notable raid 
into Kansas to terrify the border which was already 
harassed enough. The old border hatred between 



232 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Kansas and Missouri had been intensified by the 
'^murders, robberies, and arson'' which had charac- 
terized the irregular warfare carried on by both 
sides. In western Missouri, loyal unionists were 
not safe outside the federal lines; here the guerrillas 
came and went at pleasure ; and here, about August 
18, Quantrill assembled a band of some three hun- 
dred men for a foray into Kansas. On the 20th he 
entered Kansas, heading at once for Lawrence, 
which he surprised on the 21st. Although the city 
arsenal contained plenty of arms and the town 
could have mustered 500 men on ^^half an hour's 
notice," the guerrilla band met no resistance. It 
'^ robbed most of the stores and banks, and burned 
one hundred and eighty-five buildings, including one- 
fourth of the private residences and nearly all of the 
business houses of the town, and, with circumstances 
of the most fiendish atrocity, murdered 140 unarmed 
men." The retreat of Quantrill was followed by a 
vigorous federal pursuit and a partial devastation of 
the adjacent Missouri counties. Kansas, indignant, 
was in arms at once, protesting directly to President 
Lincoln of the 'imbecility and incapacity" of Major- 
general John M. Schofield, commanding the De- 
partment of the Missouri, ''whose policy has opened 
Kansas to invasion and butchery." Instead of carry- 
ing out an unimpeded pursuit of the guerrillas, 
Schofield had to devote his strength to keeping the 
state of Kansas from declaring war against and 
wreaking indiscriminate vengeance upon the state 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 233 

of Missouri. A year after Quantrill's raid came 
Price's Missouri expedition, with its pitched battles 
near Kansas City and Westport, and its pursuit 
through southern Missouri, where confederate sym- 
pathizers and the partisan poUtics of this presi- 
dential year made punitive campaigns anything but 
easy. 

Carleton's march into New Mexico has already 
been described in connection with the mining boom 
of Arizona. The silver mines of the Santa Cruz 
Valley had drawn American population to Tubac and 
Tucson several years before the war; while the con- 
federate successes in the upper Rio Grande in the 
summer of 1861 had compelled federal evacuation of 
the district. Colonel E. R. S. Canby devoted the 
small force at his command to regaining the country 
around Albuquerque and Sante Fe, while the relief 
of the forts between the Rio Grande and the Colo- 
rado was intrusted to Carleton's California Column. 
After May, 1862, Carleton was firmly established in 
Tucson, and later he was given command of the whole 
Department of New Mexico. Of fighting with the 
confederates there was almost none. He prosecuted, 
instead, Apache and Navaho wars, and exploited the 
new gold fields which were now found. In much of 
the West, as in his New Mexico, occasional ebulli- 
tions of confederate sympathizers occurred, but the 
military task of the commanders was easy. 

The military problem of the plains was one of 
police, with the extinction of guerrilla warfare and 



234 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the pacification of Indians as its chief elements. 
The careers of Canby, Carleton, and Gilpin indicate 
the nature of the western strategic warfare, Scho- 
field's illustrates that of guerrilla fighting, the Min- 
nesota outbreak that of the Indian relations. 

In the Northwest, where the agricultural expan- 
sion of the fifties had worked so great changes, the 
pressure on the tribes had steadily increased. In 
1851 the Sioux bands had ceded most of their terri- 
tory in Minnesota, and had agreed upon a reduced 
reserve in the St. Peter's, or Minnesota, Valley. But 
the terms of this treaty had been delayed in enforce- 
ment, while bad management on the part of the 
United States and the habitual frontier disregard of 
Indian rights created tense feelings, which might 
break loose at any time. No single grievance of the 
Indians caused more trouble than that over traders' 
claims. The improvident savages bought largely 
of the traders, on credit, at extortionate prices. The 
traders could afford the risk because when treaties 
of cession were made, their influence was generally 
able to get inserted in the treaty a clause for satisfy- 
ing claims against individuals out of the tribal funds 
before these were handed over to the savages. The 
memory of the savage was short, and when he found 
that his allowance, the price for his lands, had gone 
into the traders' pockets, he could not realize that it 
had gone to pay his debts, but felt, somehow, de- 
frauded. The answer would have been to prevent 
trade with the Indians on credit. But the traders' 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 235 

influence at Washington was great. It would be an 
interesting study to investigate the connection be- 
tween traders' bills- and agitation for new cessions, 
since the latter generally meant satisfaction of the 
former. 

Among the Sioux there were factional feelings that 
had aroused the apprehensions of their agents before 
the war broke out. The ^'blanket" Indians con- 
tinually mocked at the '^farmers" who took kindly 
to the efforts of the United States for their agricul- 
tural civilization. There was civil strife among the 
progressives and irreconcilables which made it 
difficult to say what was the disposition of the whole 
nation. The condition was so unstable that an acci- 
dental row, culminating in the murder of five whites 
at Acton, in Meeker County, brought down the most 
serious Indian massacre the frontier had yet seen. 

There was no more occasion for a general uprising 
in 1862 than there had been for several years. The 
wiser Indians realized the futility of such a course. 
Yet Little Crow, inclined though he was to peace, 
fell in with the radicals as the tribe discussed their 
policy; and he determined that since a massacre 
had been commenced they had best make it as thor- 
ough as possible. Retribution was certain whether 
they continued war or not, and the farmer Indians 
were unlikely to be distinguished from the blankets 
by angry frontiersmen. The attack fell first upon the 
stores at the lower agency, twenty miles above Fort 
Ridgely, whence refugee whites fled to Fort Ridgely 



236 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

with news of the outbreak. All day, on the 18th of 
August, massacres occurred along the St. Peter's, 
from near New Ulm to the Yellow Medicine River. 
The incidents of Indian war were all there, in sur- 
prise, slaughter of women and children, mutilation 
and torture. 

The next day, Tuesday the 19th, the increasing 
bands fell upon the rambling village of New Ulm, 
twenty-eight miles above Mankato, where fugitives 
had gathered and where Judge Charles E. Flandrau 
hastily organized a garrison for defence. He had 
been at St. Peter's when the news arrived, and had 
led a relief band through the drenching rain, reach- 
ing New Ulm in the evening. On Wednesday after- 
noon Little Crow, his band still growing — the Sioux 
could muster some 1300 warriors — surprised Fort 
Ridgely, though with no success. On Thursday he 
renewed the attack with a force now dwindling be- 
cause of individual plundering expeditions which drew 
his men to various parts of the neighboring country. 
On Friday he attacked once more. 

On Saturday the 23d Little Crow came down the 
river again to renew his fight upon New Ulm, which, 
unmolested since Tuesday, had been increasing its 
defences. Here Judge Flandrau led out the whites 
in a pitched battle. A few of his men were old fron- 
tiersmen, cool and determined, of unerring aim; 
but most were German settlers, recently arrived, and 
often terrified by their new experiences. During 
the week of horrors the depredations covered the 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 237 

Minnesota frontier and lapped over into Iowa and 
Dakota. Isolated families, murdered and violated, 
or led captive into the wilderness, were common. 
Stories of those who survived these dangers form a 
large part of the local literature of this section of the 
Northwest. At New Ulm the situation had become 
so desperate that on the 25th Flandrau evacuated the 
town and led its whole remaining population to safety 
at Mankato. 

Long before the week of suffering was over, aid 
had been started to the harassed frontier. Governor 
Ramsey, of Minnesota, hurried to Mendota, and there 
organized a relief column to move up the Minnesota 
Valley. Henry Hastings Sibley, quite different from 
him of Rio Grande fame, commanded the column 
and reached St. Peter's with his advance on Friday. 
By Sunday he had 1400 men with whom to quiet the 
panic and restore peace and repopulate the deserted 
country. He was now joined by Ignatius Donnelly, 
Lieutenant-governor, sent to urge greater speed. 
The advance was resumed. By Friday, the 29th, 
they had reached Fort Ridgely, passing through coun- 
try '^abandoned by the inhabitants; the houses, in 
many cases, left with the doors open, the furniture 
undisturbed, while the cattle ranged about the doors 
or through the cultivated fields.'' The country had 
been settled up to the very edge of the Fort Ridgely 
reserve. It was entirely deserted, though only par- 
tially devastated. Donnelly commented in his report 
upon the prayer-books and old German trunks of 



238 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 



u 



Johann Schwartz/' strewn upon the ground in one 
place; and upon bodies found, '^ bloated, discolored, 
and far gone in decomposition.'' The Indian agent, 
Thomas J. Galbraith, who was at Fort Ridgely dur- 
ing the trouble, reported in 1863, that 737 whites 
were known to have been massacred. 

Sibley, having reached Fort Ridgely, proceeded at 
first to reconnoitre and bury the dead, then to follow 
the Indians and rescue the captives. More than once 
the tribes had found that it was wise to carry off 
prisoners, who by serving as hostages might mollify 
or prevent punishment for the original outbreak. 
Early in September there were pitched battles at 
Birch Coolie and Fort Abercrombie and Wood Lake. 
At this last engagement, on September 23, Sibley was 
able not only to defeat the tribes and take nearly 
2000 prisoners, but to release 227 women and chil- 
dren, who had been the ^ ^ prime object, " from whose 
'^pursuit nothing could drive or divert him." The 
Indians were handed over under arrest to Agent 
Galbraith to be conveyed first to the Lower Agency, 
and then, in November, to Fort Snelling. 

The punishment of the Sioux was heavy. Inkpa- 
duta's massacre at Spirit Lake was still remembered 
and unavenged. Sibley now cut them down in 
battle in 1862, though Little Crow and other leaders 
escaped. In 1863, Pope, who had been called to 
command a new department in the Northwest, or- 
ganized a general campaign against the tribes, send- 
ing Sibley up the Minnesota River to drive them west, 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 239 

and Sully up the Missouri to head them off, planning 
to catch and crush them between the two columns. 
The manoeuvre was badly timed and failed, while 
punishment drifted gradually into a prolonged war. 
Civil retribution was more severe, and fell, with 
judicial irony, on the farmer Sioux who had been 
drawn reluctantly into the struggle. At the Lower 
Agency, at Redwood, the captives were held, while 
more than four hundred of their men were singled 
out for trial for murder. Nothing is more significant 
of the anomalous nature of the Indian relation than 
this trial for murder of prisoners of war. The United 
States held the tribes nationally to account, yet felt 
free to punish individuals as though they were citi- 
zens of the United States. The military commission 
sat at Redwood for several weeks with the missionary 
and linguist. Rev. S. R. Riggs, ^4n effect, the Grand 
Jury of the court." Three hundred and three were 
condemned to death by the court for murder, rape, 
and arson, their condemnation starting a wave of 
protest over the country, headed by the Indian Com- 
missioner, W. P. Dole. To the indignation of the 
frontier, naturally revengeful and never impartial, 
President Lincoln yielded to the protests in the case 
of most of the condemned. Yet thirty-eight of 
them were hanged on a single scaffold at Mankato 
on December 26, 1862. The innocent and uncon- 
demned were punished also, when Congress con- 
fiscated all their Minnesota reserve in 1863, and 
transferred the tribe to Fort Thompson on the 



240 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Missouri, where less desirable quarters were found 
for them. 

All along the edge of the frontier, from Minnesota 
to the Rio Grande, were problems that drew the West 
into the movement of the Civil War. The situation 
was trying for both whites and Indians, but nowhere 
did the Indians suffer between the millstones as they 
did in the Indian Territory, where the Cherokee and 
Creeks, Choctaw and Chickasaw and Seminole, 
had been colonized in the years of creation of the 
Indian frontier. For a generation these nations 
had resided in comparative peace and advancing 
civilization, but they were undone by causes which 
they could not control. 

The confederacy was no sooner organized than its 
commissioners demanded of the tribes colonized west 
of Arkansas their allegiance and support, professing 
to have inherited all the rights and obligations of the 
United States. To the Indian leaders, half civilized 
and better, this demand raised difficulties which 
would have been a strain on any diplomacy. If 
they remained loyal to the United States, the con- 
federate forces, adjacent in Arkansas and Texas, and 
already coveting their lands, would cut them to pieces. 
If they adhered to the confederacy and the latter 
lost, they might anticipate the resentment of the 
United States. Yet they were too weak to stand 
alone and were forced to go one way or other. The 
resulting policy was temporizing and brought to 
them a large measure of punishment from both 



THE PLAINS IN THE CIVIL WAR 241 

sides, and the heavy subsequent wrath of the 
United States. 

John Ross, principal chief in the Cherokee nation, 
tried to maintain his neutrahty at the commencement 
of the conflict, but the fiction of Indian nationahty 
was too sHght for his effort to be successful. During 
the spring and summer of 1861 he struggled against 
the confederate control to which he succumbed by 
August, when confederate troops had overrun most 
of Indian Territory, and disloyal Indian agents had 
surrendered United States property to the enemy. 
The war which followed resembled the guerrilla con- 
flicts of Kansas, with the addition of the Indian ele- 
ment. 

By no means all the Indians accepted the con- 
federate control. When the Indian Territory forts 
— Gibson, Arbuckle, Washita, and Cobb — fell 
into the hands of the South, loyal Indians left their 
homes and sought protection within the United 
States lines. Almost the only way to fight a war in 
which a population is generally divided, is by means 
of depopulation and concentration. Along the 
Verdigris River, in southeast Kansas, these Indian 
refugees settled in 1861 and 1862, to the number of 
6000. Here the Indian Commissioner fed them as 
best he could, and organized them to fight when that 
was possible. With the return of federal success in 
the occupation of Fort Smith and western Arkansas 
during the next two years, the natives began to 
return to their homes. But the relation of their 



242 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

tribes to the United States was tainted. The com- 
pulsory cession of their western lands which came at 
the close of the conflict belongs to a later chapter and 
the beginnings of Oklahoma. Here, as elsewhere, 
the condition of the tribes was permanently changed. 
The great plains and the Far West were only the 
outskirts of the Civil War. At no time did they shape 
its course, for the Civil War was, from their point of 
view, only an incidental sectional contest in the East, 
and merely an episode in the grander development 
of the United States. The way is opening ever 
wider for the historian who shall see in this material 
development and progress of civilization the central 
thread of American history, and in accordance with 
it, retail the story. But during the years of sectional 
strife the West was occasionally connected with the 
struggle, while toward their close it passed rapidly 
into a period in which it came to be the admitted 
centre of interest. The last stand of the Indians 
against the onrush of settlement is a warfare with an 
identity of its own. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE CHEYENNE WAR 

It has long been the custom to attribute the dan- 
gerous restlessness of the Indians during and after the 
Civil War to the evil machinations of the Confederacy. 
It has been plausible to charge that agents of the 
South passed among the tribes, inciting them to 
outbreak by pointing out the preoccupation of the 
United States and the defencelessness of the frontier. 
Popular narratives often repeat this charge when 
dealing with the wars and depredations, whether 
among the Sioux of Minnesota, or the Northwest 
tribes, or the Apache and Navaho, or the Indians 
of the plains. Indeed, had the South been able thus 
to harass the enemy it is not improbable that it 
would have done it. It is not impossible that it 
actually did it. But at least the charge has not been 
proved. No one has produced direct evidence to 
show the existence of agents or their connection with 
the Confederacy, though many have uttered a general 
belief in their reality. Investigators of single affairs 
have admitted, regretfully, their inabihty to add 
incitement of Indians to the charges against the 
South. If such a cause were needed to explain the 
increasing turbulence of the tribes, it might be worth 

243 



244 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

while to search further in the hope of establishing it, 
but nothing occurred in these wars which cannot be 
accounted for, fully, in facts easily obtained and 
well authenticated. 

Before 1861 the Indians of the West were com- 
monly on friendly terms with the United States. 
Occasional wars broke this friendship, and frequent 
massacres aroused the fears of one frontier or another, 
for the Indian was an irresponsible child, and the 
frontiersman was reckless and inconsiderate. But 
the outbreaks were exceptional, they were easily 
put down, and peace was rarely hard to obtain. By 
1865 this condition had changed over most of the 
West. Warfare had become systematic and widely 
spread. The frequency and similarity of outbreaks 
in remote districts suggested a harmonious plan, or 
at least similar reactions from similar provocations. 
From 1865, for nearly five years, these wars continued 
with only intervals of truce, or professed peace ; 
while during a long period after 1870, when most of 
the tribes were suppressed and well policed, upheav- 
als occurred which were clearly to be connected with 
the Indian wars. The reality of this transition from 
peace to war has caused many to charge it to the 
South. It is, however, connected with the culmina- 
tion of the westward movement, which more than ex- 
plains it. 

For a setting of the Indian wars some restatement 
of the events before 1861 is needed. By 1840 the 
agricultural frontier of the United States had reached 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 245 

the bend of the Missouri, while the Indian tribes, 
with plenty of room, had been pushed upon the plains. 
In the generation following appeared the heavy- 
traffic along the overland trails, the advance of the 
frontier into the new Northwest, and the Pacific 
railway surveys. Each of these served to compress 
the Indians and restrict their range. Accompanying 
these came curtailing of reserves, shifting of resi- 
dences to less desirable grounds, and individual 
maltreatment to a degree which makes marvellous 
the incapacity, weakness, and patience of the Indi- 
ans. Occasionally they struggled, but always they 
lost. The scalped and mutilated pioneer, with 
his haystacks burning and his stock run off, is a 
vivid picture in the period, but is less characteristic 
than the long-suffering Indian, accepting the inevi- 
table, and moving to let the white man in. 

The necessary results of white encroachment were 
destruction of game and education of the Indian to 
the luxuries and vices of the white man. At a time 
when starvation was threatening because of the 
disappearance of the buffalo and other food animals, 
he became aware of the superior diet of the whites 
and the ease with which robbery could be accom- 
plished. In the fifties the pressure continued, heav- 
ier than ever. The railway surveys reached nearly 
every corner of the Indian Country. In the next 
few years came the prospectors who started hundreds 
of mining camps beyond the line of settlements, 
while the engineers began to stick the advancing 



246 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

heads of railways out from the Missouri frontier and 
into the buffalo range. 

Even the Indian could see the approaching end. 
It needed no confederate envoy to assure him that 
the United States could be attacked. His own 
hunger and the white peril were persuading him to 
defend his hunting-ground. Yet even now, in the 
widespread Indian wars of the later sixties, uni- 
formity of action came without much previous 
cooperation. A general Indian league against the 
whites was never raised. The general war, upon 
dissection and analysis, breaks up into a multitude 
of little wars, each having its own particular causes, 
which, in many instances, if the word of the most 
expert frontiersmen is to be believed, ran back into 
cases of white aggression and Indian revenge. 

The Sioux uprising of 1862 came a little ahead of 
the general wars, with causes rising from the treaties 
of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux in 1851. The 
plains situation had been clearly seen and succinctly 
stated in this year. ^^We are constrained to say,'^ 
wrote the men who made these treaties, ^Hhat in our 
opinion the time has come when the extinguishment 
of the Indian title to this region should no longer be 
delayed, if government would not have the mortifi- 
cation, on the one hand, of confessing its inability to 
protect the Indian from encroachment; or be sub- 
ject to the painful necessity, upon the other, of 
ejecting by force thousands of its citizens from a 
land which they desire to make their homes, and 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 247 

which, without their occupancy and labor, will be 
comparatively useless and waste." The other trea- 
ties concluded in this same year at Fort Laramie 
were equally the fountains of discontent which 
boiled over in the early sixties and gave rise at 
last to one of the most horrible incidents of the 
plains war. 

In the Laramie treaties the first serious attempt 
to partition the plains among the tribes was made. 
The lines agreed upon recognized existing conditions 
to a large extent, while annuities were pledged in con- 
sideration of which the savages agreed to stay at 
peace, to allow free migration along the trails, and 
to keep within their boundaries. The Sioux here 
agreed that they belonged north of the Platte. The 
Arapaho and Cheyenne recognized their area as 
lying between the Platte and the Arkansas, the moun- 
tains and, roughly, the hundred and first meridian. 
For ten years after these treaties the last-named 
tribes kept the faith to the exclusion of attacks upon 
settlers or emigrants. They even allowed the Senate 
in its ratification of the treaty to reduce the term of 
the annuities from fifty years to fifteen. 

In a way, the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians 
lay off the beaten tracks and apart from contact with 
the whites. Their home was in the triangle between 
the great trails, with a mountain wall behind them 
that offered almost insuperable obstacles to those 
who would cross the continent through their domain. 
The Gunnison railroad survey, which was run along 



248 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the thirty-ninth parallel and through the Cochetopa 
Pass, revealed the difficulty of penetrating the range 
at this point. Accordingly, a decade which built up 
Oregon and California made little impression on this 
section until in 1858 gold was discovered in Cherry 
Creek. Then came the deluge. 

Nearly one hundred thousand miners and hangers- 
on crossed the plains to the Pikers Peak country in 
1859 and settled unblushingly in the midst of the 
Indian lands. They ^^ possessed nothing more than 
the right of transit over these lands," admitted the 
Peace Commissioners in 1868. Yet they ^Hook 
possession of them for the purpose of mining, and, 
against the protest of the Indians, founded cities, 
established farms, and opened roads. Before 1861 
the Cheyenne and Arapaho had been driven from 
the mountain regions down upon the waters of 
the Arkansas, and were becoming sullen and dis- 
contented because of this violation of their rights." 
The treaty of 1851 had guaranteed the Indians in 
their possession, pledging the United States to pre- 
vent depredations by the whites, but here, as in most 
similar cases, the guarantees had no weight in the 
face of a population under way. The Indians were 
brushed aside, the United States agents made no 
real attempts to enforce the treaty, and within a few 
months the settlers were demanding protection 
against the surrounding tribes. ''The Indians saw 
their former homes and hunting grounds overrun by a 
greedy population, thirsting for gold," continued the 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 249 

Commissioners. ^'They saw their game driven east 
to the plains, and soon found themselves the objects 
of jealousy and hatred. They too must go. The 
presence of the injured is too often painful to the 
wrong-doer, and innocence offensive to the eyes of 
guilt. It now became apparent that what had been 
taken by force must be retained by the ravisher, 
and nothing was left for the Indian but to ratify a 
treaty consecrating the act.'^ 

Instead of a war of revenge in which the Arapaho 
and Cheyenne strove to defend their lands and to 
drive out the intruders, a war in which the United 
States ought to have cooperated with the Indians, 
a treaty of cession followed. On February 18, 1861, 
at Fort Wise, which was the new name for Bent's 
old fort on the Arkansas, an agreement was signed 
by which these tribes gave up much of the great range 
reserved for them in 1851, and accepted in its place, 
with what were believed to be greater guarantees, a 
triangular tract bounded, east and northeast, by 
Sand Creek, in eastern Colorado; on the south by 
the Arkansas and Purgatory rivers; and extending 
west some ninety miles from the junction of Sand 
Creek and the Arkansas. The cessions made by the 
Ute on the other side of the range, not long after 
this, are another part of the same story of mining 
aggression. The new Sand Creek reserve was de- 
signed to remove the Arapaho and Cheyenne from 
under the feet of the restless prospectors. For years 
they had kept the peace in the face of great provo- 



250 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

cation. For three years more they put up with white 
encroachment before their war began. 

The Colorado miners, Hke those of the other boom 
camps, had been loud in their demand for transporta- 
tion. To satisfy this, overland traffic had been 
organized on a large scale, while during 1862 the 
stage and freight service of the plains fell under the 
control of Ben Holladay. Early in August, 1864, 
Holladay was nearly driven out of business. About 
the 10th of the month, simultaneous attacks were 
made along his mail line from the Little Blue River 
to within eighty miles of Denver. In the forays, 
stations were sacked and burned, isolated farms were 
wiped out, small parties on the trails were destroyed. 
At Ewbank Station, a family of ten ^^was massacred 
and scalped, and one of the females, besides having 
suffered the latter inhuman barbarity, was pinned to 
the earth by a stake thrust through her person, in a 
most revolting manner; ... at Plum Creek . . . 
nine persons were murdered, their train, consisting 
of ten wagons, burnt, and two women and two chil- 
dren captured. . . . The old Indian traders . . . 
and the settlers . . . abandoned their habitations.'^ 
For a distance of 370 miles, Holladay's general super- 
intendent declared, every ranch but one was ^^ de- 
serted and the property abandoned to the Indians.'' 

Fifteen years after the destruction of his stations, 
Holladay was still claiming damages from the United 
States and presenting affidavits from his men which 
revealed the character of the attacks. George H. 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 251 

Carlyle told how his stage was chased by Indians for 
twenty miles, how he had helped to bury the muti- 
lated bodies of the Plum Creek victims, and how 
within a week the route had to be abandoned, and 
every ranch from Fort Kearney to Julesburg was 
deserted. The division agent told how property 
had been lost in the hurried flight. To save some of 
the stock, fodder and supplies had to be sacrificed, — 
hundreds of sacks of corn, scores of tons of hay, 
besides the buildings and their equipment. Nowhere 
were the Indians overbold in their attacks. In small 
bands they waited their time to take the stations by 
surprise. Well-armed coaches might expect to get 
through with little more than a few random shots, 
but along the hilltops they could often see the savages 
waiting in safety for them to pass. Indian warfare 
was not one of organized bodies and formal ma- 
noeuvres. Only when cornered did the Indian 
stand to fight. But in wild, unexpected descents 
the tribes fell upon the lines of communication, 
reducing the frontier to an abject terror overnight. 
The destruction of the stage route was not the first, 
though it was the most general hostility which 
marked the commencement of a new Indian war. 
Since the spring of 1864 events had occurred which 
in the absence of a more rigorous control than the 
Indian Department possessed, were Hkely to lead to 
trouble. The Cheyenne had been dissatisfied with 
the Fort Wise treaty ever since its conclusion. The 
Sioux were carrying on a prolonged war. The 



252 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa were ready to be 
started on the war-path. It was the old story of 
too much compression and isolated attacks going 
unpunished. Whatever the merits of an original 
controversy, the only way to keep the savages under 
control was to make fair retribution follow close upon 
the commission of an outrage. But the punishment 
needed to be fair. 

In April, 1864, a ranchman named Ripley came 
into one of the camps on the South Platte and de- 
clared that some Indians had stolen his stock. Per- 
haps his statement was true ; but it must be remem- 
bered that the ranchman whose stock strayed away 
was prone to charge theft against the Indians, and 
that there is only Ripley's own word that he ever 
had any stock. Captain Sanborn, commanding, sent 
out a troop of cavalry to recover the animals. They 
came upon some Indians with horses which Ripley 
claimed as his, and in an attempt to disarm them, a 
fight occurred in which the troop was driven off. 
Their lieutenant thought the Indians were Cheyenne. 

A few weeks after this. Major Jacob Downing, 
who had been in Camp Sanborn inspecting troops, 
came into Denver and got from Colonel Chivington 
about forty men, with whom ^Ho go against the 
Indians.'' Downing later swore that he found the 
Cheyenne village at Cedar Bluffs. ^^We commenced 
shooting; I ordered the men to commence killing 
them. . . . They lost . . . some twenty-six killed 
and thirty wounded. ... I burnt up their lodges and 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 253 

everything I could get hold of. . . . We captured 
about one hundred head of stock, which was dis- 
tributed among the boys.'' 

On the 12th of June, a family living on Box Elder 
Creek, twenty miles east of Denver, was murdered 
by the Indians. Hungate, his wife, and two children 
were killed, the house burned, and fifty or sixty head 
of stock run off. When the ^^ scalped and horribly 
mangled bodies" were brought into Denver, the 
population, already uneasy, was thrown into panic by 
this appearance of danger so close to the city. Gov- 
ernor Evans began at once to organize the militia for 
home defence and to appeal to Washington for help. 

By the time of the attack upon the stage line it 
was clear that an Indian war existed, involving in 
varying degrees parts of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, 
Comanche, and Kiowa tribes. The merits of the 
causes which provoked it were considerably in doubt. 
On the frontier there was no hesitation in charging 
it all to the innate savagery of the tribes. Governor 
Evans was entirely satisfied that ^^ while some of the 
Indians might yet be friendly, there was no hope of a 
general peace on the plains, until after a severe 
chastisement of the Indians for these depredations." 

In restoring tranquillity the frontier had to rely 
largely upon its own resources. Its own Second 
Colorado was away doing duty in the Missouri cam- 
paign, while the eastern military situation presented 
no probability of troops being available to help out 
the West. Colonel Chivington and Governor John 



254 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Evans, with the long-distance aid of General Curtis, 
were forced to make their own plans and execute 
them. 

As early as June, Governor Evans began his cor- 
rective measures, appealing first to Washington for 
permission to raise extra troops, and then endeavor- 
ing to separate the friendly and warlike Indians in 
order that the former ^^ should not fall victims to the 
impossibility of soldiers discriminating between them 
and the hostile, upon whom they must, to do any 
good, inflict the most severe chastisement.'^ To 
this end, and with the consent of the Indian Depart- 
ment, he sent out a proclamation, addressed to "the 
friendly Indians of the Plains," directing them to 
keep away from those who were at war, and as evi- 
dence of friendship to congregate around the agencies 
for safety. Forts Lyons, Laramie, Larned, and 
Camp Collins were designated as concentration 
points for the several tribes. ^^None but those who 
intend to be friendly with the whites must come to 
these places. The families of those who have gone 
to war with the whites must be kept away from 
among the friendly Indians. The war on hostile 
Indians will be continued until they are all effectually 
subdued.'' The Indians, frankly at war, paid no 
attention to this invitation. Two small bands only 
sought the cover of the agencies, and with their 
exception, so Governor Evans reported on October 
15, the proclamation '^met no response from any of 
the Indians of the plains." 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 255 

The war parties became larger and more general 
as the summer advanced, driving whites off the plains 
between the two trails for several hundred miles. But 
as fall approached, the tribes as usual sought peace. 
The Indians' time for war was summer. Without 
supplies, they were unable to fight through the win- 
ter, so that autumn brought them into a mood well 
disposed to peace, reservations, and government 
rations. Major Colley, the agent on the Sand Creek 
reserve at Fort Lyon, received an overture early in 
September. In a letter written for them on August 
29, by a trader. Black Kettle, of the Cheyenne, and 
other chiefs declared their readiness to make a peace 
if all the tribes were included in it. As an olive 
branch,they offered to give up seven white prisoners. 
They admitted that five war parties, three Cheyenne 
and two Arapaho, were yet in the field. 

Upon receipt of Black Kettle's letter. Major E. 
W. Wynkoop, military commander at Fort Lyon, 
marched with 130 men to the Cheyenne camp at 
Bend of Timbers, some eighty miles northeast of 
Fort Lyons. Here he found ''from six to eight 
hundred Indian warriors drawn up in line of battle 
and prepared to fight." He avoided fighting, de- 
manded and received the prisoners, and held a coun- 
cil with the chiefs. Here he told them that he had 
no authority to conclude a peace, but offered to con- 
duct a group of chiefs to Denver, for a conference 
with Governor Evans. 

On September 28, Governor Evans held a council 



256 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

with the Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs brought in 
by Major Wynkoop ; Black Kettle and White An- 
telope being the most important. Black Kettle 
opened the conference with an appeal to the governor 
in which he alluded to his delivery of the prisoners 
and Wynkoop's invitation to visit Denver. ^^We 
have come with our eyes shut, following his handful 
of men, like coming through the fire," Black Kettle 
went on. ^^AU we ask is that we may have peace 
with the whites. We want to hold you by the hand. 
You are our father. We have been travelling 
through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since 
the war began. These braves who are with me are 
all willing to do what I say. We want to take good 
tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in 
peace. I want you to give all these -chiefs of the sol- 
diers here to understand that we are for peace, and 
that we have made peace, that we may not be mis- 
taken by them for enemies.'' To him Governor 
Evans responded that this submission was a long time 
coming, and that the nation had gone to war, refus- 
ing to listen to overtures of peace. This Black Ket- 
tle admitted. 

^'So far as making a treaty now is concerned," 
continued Governor Evans, ''we are in no condition 
to do it. . . . You, so far, have had the advantage; but 
the time is near at hand when the plains will swarm 
with United States soldiers. I have learned that 
you understand that as the whites are at war among 
themselves, you think you can now drive the whites 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 257 

from this country; but this reliance is false. The 
Great Father at Washington has men enough to drive 
all the Indians off the plains, and whip the rebels 
at the same time. Now the war with the whites is 
nearly through, and the Great Father will not 
know what to do with all his soldiers, except to send 
them after the Indians on the plains. My proposi- 
tion to the friendly Indians has gone out ; [I] shall be 
glad to have them all come in under it. I have no 
new proposition to make. Another reason that I am 
not in a condition to make a treaty is that war is 
begun, and the power to make a treaty of peace has 
passed to the great war chief." He further coun- 
selled them to make terms with the military authori- 
ties before they could hope to talk of peace. No pros- 
pect of an immediate treaty was given to the chiefs. 
Evans disclaimed further powers, and Colonel Chiv- 
ington closed the council, saying: ^^I am not a big 
war chief, but all the soldiers in this country are at my 
command. My rule of fighting white men or Ind- 
ians is to fight them until they lay down their arms 
and submit." The same evening came a despatch 
from Major-general Curtis, at Fort Leavenworth, 
confirming the non-committal attitude of Evans and 
Chivington: ^^I want no peace till the Indians 
suffer more. ... I fear Agent of the Interior Depart- 
ment will be ready to make presents too soon. . . . 
No peace must be made without my directions." 

The chiefs were escorted home without their peace 
or any promise of it. Governor Evans believing that 



258 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the great body of the tribes was still hostile, and that 
a decisive winter campaign was needed to destroy 
their lingering notion that the whites might be driven 
from the plains. Black Kettle had been advised at 
the council to surrender to the soldiers, Major Wyn- 
koop at Fort Lyon being mentioned as most avail- 
able. Many of his tribe acted on the suggestion, so 
that on October 20 Agent Colley, their constant 
friend, 'reported that ^^ nearly all the Arapahoes are 
now encamped near this place and desire to re- 
main friendly, and make reparation for the damages 
committed by them." 

The Indians unquestionably were ready to make 
peace after their fashion and according to their 
ability. There is no evidence that they were recon- 
ciled to their defeat, but long experience had ac- 
customed them to fighting in the summer and draw- 
ing rations as peaceful in the winter. The young 
men, in part, were still upon the war-path, but the 
tribes and the head chiefs were anxious to go upon a 
winter basis. Their interpreter who had attended 
the conference swore that they left Denver, ^^per- 
fectly contented, deeming that the matter was set- 
tled," that upon their return to Fort Lyon, Major 
Wynkoop gave them permission to bring their fam- 
ilies in under the fort where he could watch them 
better; and that ^^accordingly the chiefs went after 
their families and villages and brought them in, 
. . . satisfied that they were in perfect security and 
safety." 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 259 

While the Indians gathered around the fort, 
Major Wynkoop sent to General Curtis for advice 
and orders respecting them. Before the orders ar- 
rived, however, he was relieved from command and 
Major Scott J. Anthony, of the First Colorado Cav- 
alry, was detailed in his place. After holding a con- 
ference with the Indians and Anthony, in which 
the latter renewed the permission for the bands to 
camp near the fort, he left Fort Lyons on November 
26. Anthony meanwhile had become convinced that 
he was exceeding his authority. First he disarmed 
the savages, receiving only a few old and worn-out 
weapons. Then he returned these and ordered the 
Indians away from Fort Lyons. They moved forty 
miles away and encamped on Sand Creek. 

The Colorado authorities had no idea of calling it 
a peace. Governor Evans had scolded Wynkoop 
for bringing the chiefs in to Denver. He had re- 
ceived special permission and had raised a hundred- 
day regiment for an Indian campaign. If he should 
now make peace, Washington would think he had 
misrepresented the situation and put the govern- 
ment to needless expense. ^^What shall I do with 
the third regiment, if I make peace ?" he demanded 
of Wynkoop. They were ^^ raised to kill Indians, 
and they must kill Indians.^' 

Acting on the supposition that the war was still on. 
Colonel Chivington led the Third Colorado, and a 
part of the First Colorado Cavalry, from 900 to 1000 
strong, to Fort Lyons in November, arriving two 



260 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

days after Wynkoop departed. He picketed the 
fort, to prevent the news of his arrival from getting 
out, and conferred on the situation with Major 
Anthony, who, swore Major Downing, wished he 
would attack the Sand Creek camp and would have 
done so himself had he possessed troops enough. 
Three days before, Anthony had given a present to 
Black Kettle out of his own pocket. As the result of 
the council of war, Chivington started from Fort 
Lyon at nine o'clock, on the night of the 28th. 

About daybreak on November 29 Chivington's 
force reached the Cheyenne village on Sand Creek, 
where Black Kettle, White Antelope, and some 
500 of their band, mostly women and children, 
were encamped in the belief that they had made 
their peace. They had received no pledge of this, 
but past practice explained their confidence. The 
village was surrounded by troops who began to fire 
as soon as it was light. ^^We killed as many as we 
could; the village was destroyed and burned," de- 
clared Downing, who further professed, ^^I think 
and earnestly believe the Indians to be an obstacle to 
civilization, and should be exterminated." White 
Antelope was killed at the first attack, refusing to 
leave the field, stating that it was the fault of Black 
Kettle, others, and himself that occasioned the mas- 
sacre, and that he would die. Black Kettle, refusing 
to leave the field, was carried off by his young men. 
The latter had raised an American flag and a white 
flag in his effort to stop the fight. 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 261 

The firing began, swore interpreter Smith, on 
the northeast side of Sand Creek, near Black Ket- 
tle's lodge. Driven thence, the disorderly horde of 
savages retreated to War Bonnet's lodge at the upper 
end of the village, some few of them armed but most 
making no resistance. Up the dry bottom of Sand 
Creek they ran, with the troops in wild charge close 
behind. In the hollows of the banks they sought 
refuge, but the soldiers dragged them out, killing 
seventy or eighty with the worst barbarities Smith 
had seen: ^^All manner of depredations were in- 
flicted on their persons; they were scalped, their 
brains knocked out; the men used their knives, 
ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked 
them in the head with their guns, beat their brains 
out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the 
word." The affidavits of soldiers engaged in the 
attack are printed in the government documents. 
They are too disgusting to be more than referred to 
elsewhere. 

Here at last was the culmination of the plains war 
of 1864 in the ^' Chivington massacre," which has been 
the centre of bitter controversy ever since its heroes 
marched into Denver with their bloody trophies. It 
was without question Indian fighting at its worst, yet 
it was successful in that the Indian hostilities stopped 
and a new treaty was easily obtained by the whites 
in 1865. The East denounced Chivington, and the 
Indian Commissioner described the event in 1865 as 
a butchery '4n cold blood by troops in the service of 



262 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the United States." '^ Comment cannot magnify 
the horror," said the Nation. The heart of the ques- 
tion had to do with the matter of good faith. At no 
time did the miUtary or Colorado authorities admit 
or even appear to admit that the war was over. 
They regarded the campaign as punitive and neces- 
sary for the foundation of a secure peace. The Ind- 
ians, on the other hand, beUeved that they had sur- 
rendered and were anxious to be let alone. Too often 
their wish in similar cases had been gratified, to the 
prolongation of destructive wars. What here oc- 
curred was horrible from any standard of civilized 
criticism. But even among civilized nations war is 
an unpleasant thing, and war with savages is most 
merciful, in the long run, when it speaks the savages^ 
own tongue with no uncertain accent. That such 
extreme measures could occur was the result of the 
impossible situation on the plains. *^My opinion," 
said Agent CoUey, '4s that white men and wild 
Indians cannot live in the same country in peace." 
With several different and diverging authorities over 
them, with a white population wanting their reserves 
and anxious for a provocation that might justify re- 
taliation upon them, little difficulties were certain to 
lead to big results. It was true that the tribes were 
being dispossessed of lands which they believed to be- 
long to them. It was equally true that an Indian war 
could terrify a whole frontier and that stern repres- 
sion was its best cure. The blame which was ac- 
corded to Chivington left out of account the terror in 



THE CHEYENNE WAR 263 

Colorado, which was no less real because the whites 
were the aggressors. The slaughter and mutilation 
of Indian women and children did much to embitter 
Eastern critics, who did not realize that the only way 
to crush an Indian war is to destroy the base of sup- 
plies, — the camp where the women are busy help- 
ing to keep the men in the field; and who overlooked 
also the fact that in the melee the squaws were quite 
as dangerous as the bucks. Indiscriminate blame 
and equally indiscriminate praise have been accorded 
because of the Sand Creek affair. The terrible 
event was the result of the orderly working of causes t ' 
over which individuals had little control. (-,,' 

In October, 1865, a peace conference was held on ' 
the Little Arkansas at which terms were agreed 
upon with Apache, Kiowa and Comanche, Arapaho 
and Cheyenne, while the last named surrendered 
their reserve at Sand Creek. For four years after 
this, owing to delays in the Senate and ambiguity 
in the agreements, they had no fixed abode. Later 
they were given room in the Indian Territory in lands 
taken from the civilized tribes. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE SIOUX WAR 

The struggle for the possession of the plains worked 
the displacement of the Indian tribes. At the be- 
ginning, the invasion of Kansas had undone the work 
accomplished in erecting the Indian frontier. The 
occupation of Minnesota led surely to the downfall 
and transportation of the Sioux of the Mississippi. 
Gold in Colorado attracted multitudes who made 
peace impossible for the Indians of the southern 
plains. The Sioux of the northern plains came within 
the influence of the overland march in the same years 
with similar results. 

The northern Sioux, commonly known as the Sioux 
of the plains, and distinguished from their relatives 
the Sioux of the Mississippi, had participated in the 
treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, had granted rights 
of transit to the whites, and had been recognized 
themselves as nomadic bands occupying the plains 
north of the Platte River. Heretofore they had had 
no treaty relations with the United States, being far 
beyond the frontier. Their people, 16,000 perhaps, 
were grouped roughly in various bands : Brule, 
Yankton, Yanktonai, Blackfoot, Hunkpapa, Sans 

264 



THE SIOUX WAR 265 

Arcs, and Miniconjou. Their dependence on the 
chase made them more dependent on the annuities 
provided them at Laramie. As the game diminished 
the annuity increased in relative importance, and 
scarcely made a fair equivalent for what they lost. 
Yet on the whole, they imitated their neighbors, the 
Cheyenne and Arapaho, and kept the peace. 

Almost the only time that the pledge was broken 
was in the autumn of 1854. Continual trains of 
immigrants passing through the Sioux country made 
it nearly impossible to prevent friction between the 
races in which the blame was quite likely to fall upon 
the timorous homeseekers. On August 17, 1854, a 
cow strayed away from a band of Mormons encamped 
a few miles from Fort Laramie. Some have it that 
the cow was lame, and therefore abandoned; but 
whatever the cause, the cow was found, killed, and 
eaten by a small band of hungry Miniconjou Sioux. 
The charge of theft was brought into camp at Lara- 
mie, not by the Mormons, but by The Bear, chief of 
the Brule, and Lieutenant Grattan with an escort of 
twenty-nine men, a twelve-pounder and a mountain 
howitzer, was sent out the next day to arrest the 
Indian who had slaughtered the animal. At the 
Indian village the culprit was not forthcoming, 
Grattan's drunken interpreter roughened a diplo- 
macy which at best was none too tactful, and at last 
the troops fired into the lodge which was said to con- 
tain the offender. No one of the troops got away 
from the enraged Sioux, who, after their anger had 



266 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

led them to retaliate, followed it up by plundering the 
near-by post of the fur company. Commissioner 
Manypenny believed that this action by the troops 
was illegal and unnecessary from the start, since the 
Mormons could legally have been reimbursed from 
the Indian funds by the agent. 

No general war followed this outbreak. A few 
braves went on the warpath and rumors of great 
things reached the East, but General Harney, sent 
out with three regiments to end the Sioux war in 

1855, found little opposition and fought only one 
important battle. On the Little Blue Water, in 
September, 1855, he fell upon Little Thunder's 
band of Brule Sioux and killed or wounded nearly 
a hundred of them. There is some doubt whether 
this band had anything to do with the Grattan epi- 
sode, or whether it was even at war, but the defeat 
was, as Agent Twiss described it, ^' a thunderclap 
to them.'' For the first time they learned the 
mighty power of the United States, and General 
Harney made good use of this object lesson in the 
peace council which he held with them in March, 

1856. The treaty here agreed upon was never 
legalized, and remained only a sort of modus vivendi 
for the following years. The Sioux tribes were so 
loosely organized that the authority of the chiefs 
had little weight; young braves did as they pleased 
regardless of engagements supposed to bind the 
tribes. But the lesson of the defeat lasted long in 
the memory of the plains tribes, so that they gave 



THE SIOUX WAR 267 

little trouble until the wars of 1864 broke out. 
Meanwhile Chouteau's old Fort Pierre on the Mis- 
souri was bought by the United States and made 
a military post for the control of these upper tribes. 

Before the plains Sioux broke out again, the Min- 
nesota uprising had led the Mississippi Sioux to their 
defeat. Some were executed in the fall of 1862, 
others were transported to the Missouri Valley ; still 
others got away to the Northwest, there to continue 
a profitless war that kept up fighting for several 
years. Meanwhile came the plains war of 1864 in 
which the tribes south of the Platte were chiefly 
concerned, and in which men at the centre of the 
line thought there were evidences of an alliance be- 
tween northern and southern tribes. Thus Gov- 
ernor Evans wrote of '^ information furnished me, 
through various sources, of an alliance of the Chey- 
enne and a part of the Arapahoe tribes with the 
Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache Indians of the south, 
and the great family of the Sioux Indians of the north 
upon the plains," and the Indian Commissioner ac- 
cepted the notion. But, like the question of in- 
trigue, this was a matter of belief rather than of 
proof; while local causes to account for the disorder 
are easily found. Yet it is true that during 1864 
and 1865 the northern Sioux became uneasy. 

During 1865, though the causes likely to lead to 
hostilities were in no wise changed, efforts were made 
to reach agreements with the plains tribes. The 
Cheyenne, humbled at Sand Creek, were readily 



268 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

handled at the Little Arkansas treaty in October. 
They there surrendered to the United States all their 
reserve in Colorado and accepted a new one, which 
they never actually received, south of the Arkansas, 
and bound themselves not to camp within ten miles 
of the route to Sante Fe. On the other side, ^Ho 
heal the wounds caused by the Chivington affair, '^ 
special appropriations were made by the United 
States to the widows and orphans of those who had 
been killed. The Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche 
joined in similar treaties. During the same week, in 
1865, a special commission made treaties of peace with 
nine of the Sioux tribes, including the remnants of 
the Mississippi bands. ^^ These treaties were made,'^ 
commented the Commissioner, ^'and the Indians, in 
spite of the great suffering from cold and want of 
food endured during the very severe winter of 1865- 
66, and consequent temptation to plunder to pro- 
cure the absolute necessaries of life, faithfully kept 
the peace." 

In September, 1865, the steamer Calypso struggled 
up the shallow Missouri River, carrying a party of 
commissioners to Fort Sully, there to make these 
treaties with the Sioux. Congress had provided 
$20,000 for a special negotiation before adjourning 
in March, 1865, and General Sully, who was yet con- 
ducting the prolonged Sioux War, had pointed out 
the place most suitable for the conference. The first 
council was held on October 6. 

The military authorities were far from eager to hold 



THE SIOUX WAR 269 

this council. Already the breach between the mili- 
tary power responsible for policing the plains and 
the civilian department which managed the tribes 
was wide. Thus General Pope, commanding the 
Department of the Missouri, grumbled to Grant in 
June that whenever Indian hostilities occurred, the 
Indian Department, which was really responsible, 
blamed the soldiers for causing them. He com- 
plained of the divided jurisdiction and of the policy 
of buying treaties from the tribes by presents made 
at the councils. In reference to this special treaty 
he had ^'only to say that the Sioux Indians have 
been attacking everybody in their region of country; 
and only lately . . . attacked in heavy force Fort 
Rice, on the upper Missouri, well fortified and garri- 
soned by four companies of infantry with artillery. 
If these things show any desire for peace, I confess 
I am not able to perceive it." 

In future years this breach was to become wider 
yet. At Sand Creek the military authorities had 
justified the attack against the criticism of the local 
Indian agents and Eastern philanthropists. There 
was indeed plenty of evidence of misconduct on both 
sides. If the troops were guilty on the charge of be- 
ing over-ready to fight — and here the words of Gov- 
ernor Evans were prophetic, ^^Now the war ... is 
nearly through, and the Great Father will not know 
what to do with all his soldiers, except to send them 
after the Indians on the plains," — the Indian agents 
often succumbed to the opportunity for petty thiev- 



270 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

ing. The case of one of the agents of the Yank- 
ton Sioux illustrates this. It was his custom each 
year to have the chiefs of his tribe sign general re- 
ceipts for everything sent to the agency. Thus at 
the end of the year he could turn in Indians' vouchers 
and report nothing on hand. But the receipt did not 
mean that the Indian had got the goods; although 
signed for, these were left in the hands of the agent 
to be given out as needed. The inference is strong 
that many of the supplies intended for and signed 
for by the Indians went into the pocket of the agent. 
During the third quarter of 1863 this agent claimed 
to have issued to his charges : ''One pair of bay horses, 
7 years old; ... 1 dozen 17-inch mill files; ... 6 
dozen Seidlitz powders; 6 pounds compound syrup 
of squills; 6 dozen Ayer's pills; ... 3 bottles of 
rose water; ... 1 pound of wax; ... 1 ream of 
vouchers; . . . J M 6434 8|-inch official envelopes; 
... 4 bottles 8-ounce mucilage.'' So great was 
this particular agent's power that it was nearly im- 
possible to get evidence against him. ''If I do, he 
will fix it so I'll never get anything in the world and 
he will drive me out of the country/' was typical of 
the attitude of his neighbors. 

With jurisdiction divided, and with claimants for 
it quarrelling, it is no wonder that the charges suf- 
fered. But the ill results came more from the im- 
possible situation than from abuse on either side. It 
needs often to be reiterated that the heart of the 
Indian question was in the infiltration of greedy, 



THE SIOUX WAR 271 

timorous, enterprising, land-hungry whites who could 
not be restrained by any process known to Ameri- 
can government. In the conflict between two civil- 
izations, the lower must succumb. Neither the 
War Department nor the Indian Office was respon- 
sible for most of the troubles; yet of the two, the 
former, through readiness to fight and to hold the 
savage to a standard of warfare which he could not 
understand, was the greater offender. It was not 
so great an offender, however, as the selfish interests 
of those engaged in trading with the Indians would 
make it out to be. 

The Fort Sully conference, terminating in a treaty 
signed on October 10, 1865, was distinctly un- 
satisfactory. Many of the western Sioux did not 
come at all. Even the eastern were only partially 
represented. And among tribes in which the central 
authority of the chiefs was weak, full representation 
was necessary to secure a binding peace. The com- 
missioners, after most pacific efforts, were ^'unable 
to ascertain the existence of any really amicable 
feeling among these people towards the government." 
The chiefs were sullen and complaining, and the 
treaty which resulted did little more than repeat 
the terms of the treaty of 1851, binding the Indians 
to permit roads to be opened through their country 
and to keep away from the trails. 

It is difficult to show that the northern Sioux were 
bound by the treaty of Fort Sully. The Laramie 
treaty of 1851 had never had full force of law be- 



272 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

cause the Senate had added amendments to it, which 
all the signatory Indians had not accepted. Al- 
though Congress had appropriated the annuities 
specified in the treaty the binding force of the docu- 
ment was not great on savages. The Fort Sully 
treaty was deficient in that it did not represent all of 
the interested tribes. In making Indian treaties at 
all, the United States acted upon a convenient fiction 
that the Indians had authorities with power to bind; 
whereas the leaders had little control over their fol- 
lowers and after nearly every treaty there were 
many bands that could claim to have been left out 
altogether. Yet such as they were, the treaties ex- 
isted, and the United States proceeded in 1865 
and 1866 to use its specified rights in opening roads 
through the hunting-grounds of the Sioux. 

The mines of Montana and Idaho, which had at- 
tracted notice and emigration in the early sixties, 
were still the objective points of a large traffic. They 
were somewhat off the beaten routes, being acces- 
sible by the Missouri River and Fort Benton, or by 
the Platte trail and a northern branch from near 
Fort Hall to Virginia City. To bring them into 
more direct connection with the East an available 
route from Fort Laramie was undertaken in 1865. 
The new trail left the main road near Fort Laramie, 
crossed to the north side of the Platte, and ran off 
to the northwest. Shortly after leaving the Platte 
the road got into the charming foothill country 
where the slopes ^'are all covered with a fine growth 



THE SIOUX WAR 273 

of grass, and in every valley there is either a rushing 
stream or some quiet babbling brook of pure, clear 
snow-water filled with trout, the banks lined with 
trees — wild cherry, quaking asp, some birch, 
willow, and cottonwood." To the left, and not far 
distant, were the Big Horn Mountains. To the 
right could sometimes be seen in the distance the 
shadowy billows of the Black Hills. Running to 
the north and draining the valley were the Powder 
and Tongue rivers, both tributaries of the Yellow- 
stone. Here were water, timber, and forage, coal 
and oil and game. It was the garden spot of the 
Indians, ^Hhe very heart of their hunting-grounds." 
In a single day's ride were seen ^^bear, buffalo, elk, 
deer, antelope, rabbits, and sage-hens." With 
little exaggeration it was described as a ^'natural 
source of recuperation and supply to moving, hunt- 
ing, and roving bands of all tribes, and their lodge 
trails cross it in great numbers from north to south." 
Through this land, keeping east of the Big Horn 
Mountains and running around their northern end 
into the Yellowstone Valley, was to run the new Pow- 
der River road to Montana. The Sioux treaties 
were to have their severest testing in the selection 
of choice hunting-grounds for an emigrant road, for 
it was one of the certainties in the opening of new 
roads that game vanished in the face of emigration. 
While the commissioners were negotiating their 
treaty at Fort Sully, the first Powder River expedi- 
tion, in its attempt to open this new road by the short 



274 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

and direct route from Fort Laramie to Bozeman and 
the Montana mines, was undoing their work. In the 
summer of 1865 General Patrick E. Connor, with a 
miscellaneous force of 1600, including a detachment 
of ex-Confederate troops who had enlisted in the 
United States army to fight Indians, started from 
Fort Laramie for the mouth of the Rosebuds on the 
Yellowstone, by way of the Powder River. Old Jim 
Bridger, the incarnation of this country, led them, 
swearing mightily at ^Hhese damn paper-collar 
soldiers," who knew so little of the Indians. There 
was plenty of fighting as Connor pushed into the 
Yellowstone, but he was relieved from command in 
September and the troops were drawn back, so that 
there were no definitive results of the expedition of 
1865. 

In 1866, in spite of the fact that the Sioux of this 
region, through their leader Red Cloud, had refused 
to yield the ground or even to treat concerning it, 
Colonel Henry B. Carrington was ordered by General 
Pope to command the Mountain District, Depart- 
ment of the Platte, and to erect and garrison posts 
for the control of the Powder River road. On De- 
cember 21 of this year. Captain W. J. Fetterman, 
of his command, and seventy-eight officers and men 
were killed near Fort Philip Kearney in a fight whose 
merits aroused nearly as much acrimonious discus- 
sion as the Sand Creek massacre. 

The events leading up to the catastrophe at Fort 
Philip Kearney, a catastrophe so complete that none 




Red Cloud and Professor Marsh 
From a cut lent by Professor Warren K. Moorehead, of Audover, Mass. 



THE SIOUX WAR 275 

of its white participants escaped to tell what hap- 
pened, were connected with Carrington's work in 
building forts. He had been detailed for the work 
in the spring, and after a conference at Fort Kearney, 
Nebraska, with General Sherman, had marched his 
men in nineteen days to Fort Laramie. He reached 
Fort Reno, which became his headquarters, on June 
28. On the march, if his orders were obeyed, his 
soldiers wxre scrupulous in their regard for the Ind- 
ians. His orders issued for the control of emigrants 
passing along the Powder River route were equally 
careful. Thirty men were to constitute the mini- 
mum single party; these were to travel with a mili- 
tary pass, which was to be scrutinized by the com- 
manding officer of each post. The trains were 
ordered to hold together and were warned that 
'^nearly all danger from Indians lies in the reckless- 
ness of travellers. A small party, when separated, 
either sell whiskey to or fire upon scattering Indians, 
or get into disputes with them, and somebody is hurt. 
An insult to an Indian is resented by the Indians 
against the first white men they meet, and innocent 
travellers suffer." 

Carrington's orders were to garrison Fort Reno 
and build new forts on the Powder, Big Horn, and 
Yellowstone rivers, and cover the road. The last- 
named fort was later cut away because of his insuffi- 
cient force, but Fort Philip Kearney and Fort C. F. 
Smith were located during July and August. The 
former stood on a little plateau formed between the 



276 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

two Pineys as they emerge from the Big Horn Moun- 
tains. Its site was surveyed and occupied on July 15. 
Aheady Carrington was complaining that he had too 
few men for his work. With eight companies of 
eighty men each, and most of these new recruits, he 
had to garrison his long line, all the while building 
and protecting his stockades and fortifications. " I 
am my own engineer, draughtsman, and visit my 
pickets and guards nightly, with scarcely a day or 
night without attempts to steal stock." Worse than 
this, his military equipment was inadequate. Only 
his band, specially armed for the expedition, had 
Spencer carbines and enough ammunition. His 
main force, still armed with Springfield rifles, had 
under fifty rounds to the man. 

The Indians, Cheyenne and Sioux, were, all through 
the summer, showing no sign of accepting the inva- 
sion of the hunting-grounds without a fight. Yet 
Carrington reported on August 29 that he was hold- j I 
ing them off; that Fort C. F. Smith on the Big Horn 
had been occupied; that parties of fifty well-arm^ed 
men could get through safely if they were careful. 
The Indians, he said, '^are bent on robbery; they only 
fight when assured of personal security and remuner- 
ative stealings; they are divided among themselves." 

With the sites for forts C. F. Smith and Philip 
Kearney selected, the work of construction proceeded 
during the autumn. A sawmill, sent out from the 
states, was kept hard at work. Wood was cut on 
the adjacent hills and speedily converted into cabins 



THE SIOUX WAR 277 

and palisades which approached completion before 
winter set in. It was construction during a state of 
siege, however. Instead of pacifying the valley the 
construction of the forts aggravated the Sioux hos- 
tility so that constant watchfulness was needed. 
That the trains sent out to gather wood were not 
seriously injured was due to rigorous discipline. The 
wagons moved twenty or more at a time, with guards, 
and in two parallel columns. At first sight of Ind- 
ians they drove into corral and signalled back^to 
the lookouts at the fort for help. Occasionally men 
were indeed cut out by the Indians, who in turn 
suffered considerable loss; but Carrington reduced 
his own losses to a minimum. Friendly Indians were 
rarely seen. They were allowed to come to the fort, 
by the main road and with a white flag, but few 
availed themselves of the privilege. The Sioux 
were up in arms, and in large numbers hung about the 
Tongue and Powder river valleys waiting for their 
chance. 

Early in December occurred an incident revealing 
the danger of annihilation which threatened Carring- 
ton's command. At one o'clock on the afternoon of 
the sixth a messenger reported to the garrison at 
Fort Philip Kearney that the wood train was attacked 
by Indians four miles away. Carrington imme- 
diately had every horse at the post mounted. For 
the main relief he sent out a column under Brevet 
Lieutenant-colonel Fetterman, who had just arrived 
at the fort, while he led in person a flanking party to 



278 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

cut off the Indians^ retreat. The mercury was below 
zero. Carrington was thrown into the water of 
Peno Creek when his horse stumbled through break- 
ing ice. Fetterman's party found the wood train 
in corral and standing off the attack with success. 
The savages retreated as the relief approached and 
were pursued for five miles, when they turned and 
offered battle. Just as the fighting began, most of 
the cavalry broke away from Fetterman, leaving 
him and some fourteen others surrounded by Indians 
and attacked on three sides. He held them off, 
however, until Carrington came in sight and the Ind- 
ians fled. Why Lieutenant Bingham retreated with 
his cavalry and left Fetterman in such danger was 
never explained, for the Indians killed him and one 
of his non-commissioned officers, while several other 
privates were wounded. The Indians, once the 
fight was over, disappeared among the hills, and 
Carrington had no force with which to follow them. 
In reporting the battle that night he renewed his 
requests for men and officers. He had but six officers 
for the six companies at Fort Philip Kearney. He 
was totally unable to take the aggressive because 
of the defences which had constantly to be main- 
tained. 

In this fashion the fall advanced in the Powder 
River Valley. The forts were finished. The Indian 
hostilities increased. The little, overworked force 
of Carrington, chopping, building, guarding, and 
fighting, struggled to fulfil its orders. If one should 



THE SIOUX WAR 279 

criticise Carrington,the attack would be chiefly that 
he looked to defensive measures in the Indian war. 
He did indeed ask for troops, officers, and equipment, 
but his despatches and his own vindication show little 
evidence that he realized the need for large reen- 
forcements for the specific purpose of a punitive 
campaign. More skilful Indian fighters knew that 
the Indians could and would keep up indefinitely 
this sort of filibustering against the forts, and that a 
vigorous move against their own villages was the 
surest means to secure peace. In Indian warfare, 
even more perhaps than in civilized, it is advanta- 
geous to destroy the enemy's base of supplies. 

The wood train was again attacked on December 
21. About eleven o'clock that morning the pickets 
reported the train ^^ corralled and threatened by 
Indians on Sullivant Hills, a mile and a half from the 
fort." The usual relief party was at once organized 
and sent out under Fetterman, who claimed the right 
to command it by seniority, and who was not highest 
in the confidence of Colonel Carrington. He had 
but recently joined the command, was full of enthu- 
siasm and desire to hunt Indians, and needed the 
admonition with which he left the fort: that he 
was ^^ fighting brave and desperate enemies who 
sought to make up by cunning and deceit all the 
advantage which the white man gains by intelligence 
and better arms." He was ordered to support and 
bring in the wood train, this being all Carrington 
believed himself strong enough to do and keep on 



280 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

doing. Any one could have had a fight at any time, 
and Carrington was wise to issue the ^^ peremptory 
and expHcit" orders to avoid pursuit beyond the 
summit of Lodge Trail Ridge, as needless and unduly 
dangerous. Three times this order was given to 
Fetterman; and after that, ^^ fearing still that the 
spirit of ambition might override prudence," says 
Carrington, '^I crossed the parade and from a sentry 
platform halted the cavalry and again repeated my 
precise orders.'' 

With these admonitions, Fetterman started for 
the relief, leading a party of eighty-one officers and 
men, picked and all well armed. He crossed the 
Lodge Trail Ridge as soon as he was out of sight of 
the fort and disappeared. No one of his command 
came back alive. The wood train, before twelve 
o'clock, broke corral and moved on in safety, while 
shots were heard beyond the ridge. For half an 
hour there was a constant volleying; then all was 
still. Meanwhile Carrington, nervous at the lack of 
news from Fetterman, had sent a second column, and 
two wagons to relieve him, under Captain Ten Eyck. 
The latter, moving along cautiously, with large bands 
of Sioux retreating before him, came finally upon 
forty-nine bodies, including that of Fetterman. The 
evidence of arrows, spears, and the position of bodies 
was that they had been surrounded, surprised, and 
overwhelmed in their defeat. The next day the rest 
of the bodies were reached and brought back. Naked, 
dismembered, slashed, visited with indescribable 



THE SIOUX WAR 281 

indignities, they were buried in tv/o great graves; 
seventy-nine soldiers and two civilians. 

The Fetterman massacre raised a storm in the East 
similar in volume to that following Sand Creek, two 
years before. Who was at fault, and why, were the 
questions indignantly asked. Judicious persons were 
well aware, wrote the Nation, that ^^our whole Indian 
policy is a system of mismanagement, and in many 
parts one of gigantic^abuse. ' ' The military authorities 
tried to place the blame on Carrington, as plausible, 
energetic, and industrious, but unable to maintain 
discipline or inspire his officers with confidence. 
Unquestionably a part of this was true, yet the letter 
which made the charge admitted that often the Ind- 
ians were better armed than the troops, and the 
critic himself. General Cooke, had ordered Carring- 
ton: ^^You can only defend yourself and trains, 
and emigrants, the best you can.'' The Indian Com- 
missioner charged it on the bad disposition of the 
troops, always anxious to fight. 

The issue broke over the number of Indians in- 
volved. Current reports from Fort Philip Kearney 
indicated from 3000 to 5000 hostile warriors, chiefly 
Sioux and led by Red Cloud of the Oglala tribe. 
The Commissioner pointed out that such a force 
must imply from 21,000 to 35,000 Indians in all — 
a number that could not possibly have been in the 
Powder River country. It is reasonable to believe 
that Fetterman was not overwhelmed by any multi- 
tude like this, but that his own rash disobedience led 



282 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

to ambush and defeat by a force well below 3000. 
Upon him fell the immediate responsibility; above 
him, the War Department was negligent in detail- 
ing so few men for so large a task; and ultimately 
there was the impossibility of expecting savage Sioux 
to give up their best hunting-grounds as a result of 
a treaty signed by others than themselves. 

The fight at Fort Philip Kearney marked a point of 
transition in Indian warfare. Even here the Indians 
were mostly armed with bows and arrows, and were 
relying upon their superior numbers for victory. 
Yet a change in Indian armament was under way, 
which in a few years was to convert the Indian from 
a savage warrior into the '^ finest natural soldier in 
the world." He was being armed with rifles. As 
the game diminished the tribes found that the old 
methods of hunting were inadequate and began the 
pressure upon the Indian Department for better 
weapons. The department justified itself in issuing 
rifles and ammunition, on the ground that the laws 
of the United States expected the Indians to live 
chiefly upon game, which they could not now pro- 
cure by the older means. Hence came the anoma- 
lous situation in which one department of the 
United States armed and equipped the tribes for 
warfare against another. If arms were cut down, 
the tribes were in danger of extinction; if they 
were issued, hostilities often resulted. After the 
Fetterman massacre the Indian OflSce asserted that 
the hostile Sioux were merely hungry, because the 



THE SIOUX WAR 283 

War Department had caused the issuing of guns to 
be stopped. It was all an unsolvable problem, with 
bad temper and suspicion on both sides. 

A few months after the Fetterman affair Red Cloud 
tried again to wreck a wood train near Fort Philip 
Kearney. But this time the escort erected a barri- 
cade with the iron, bullet-proof bodies of a new vari- 
ety of army wagon, and though deserted by most of 
his men, Major James Powell, with one other officer, 
twenty-six privates, and four citizens, lay behind 
their fortification and repelled charge after charge 
from some 800 Sioux and Cheyenne. With little 
loss to himself he inflicted upon the savages a lesson 
that lasted many years. 

The Sioux and Cheyenne wars were links in the 
chain of Indian outbreaks that stretched across the 
path of the westward movement, the overland traffic 
and the continental railways. The Pacific railways 
had been chartered just as the overland telegraph 
had been opened to the Pacific coast. With this last, 
perhaps from reverence for the nearly supernatural, 
the Indians rarely meddled. But as the railway 
advanced, increasing compression and repression 
stirred the tribes to a series of hostilities. The first 
treaties which granted transit — meaning chiefly 
wagon transit — broke down. A new series of con- 
ferences and a new policy were the direct result of 
these wars. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 

The crisis in the struggle for the control of the great 
plains may fairly be said to have been reached about 
the time of the slaughter of Fetterman and his men 
at Fort Philip Kearney. During the previous fifteen 
years the causes had been shaping through the devel- 
opment of the use of the trails, the opening of the 
mining territories, and the agitation for a continental 
railway. Now the railway was not only authorized 
and begun, but Congress had put a premium upon 
its completion by an act of July, 1866, which per- 
mitted the Union Pacific to build west and the 
Central Pacific to build east until the two lines should 
meet. In the ensuing race for the land grants the 
roads were pushed with new vigor, so that the crisis 
of the Indian problem was speedily reached. In the 
fall of 1866 Ben Holladay saw the end of the over- 
land freighting and sold out. In November the 
terminus of the overland mail route was moved west 
to Fort Kearney, Nebraska, whither the Union Pacific 
had now arrived in its course of construction. No 
wonder the tribes realized their danger and broke 
out in protest. 

As the crisis drew near radical differences of opin- 

284 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 285 

ion among those who must handle the tribes became 
apparent. The question of the management by the 
War Department or the Interior was in the air, and 
was raised again and again in Congress. More 
fundamental was the question of policy, upon which 
the view of Senator John Sherman was as clear as any. 
" I agree with you," he wrote to his brother WiUiam, 
in 1867, '' that Indian wars will not cease until all the 
Indian tribes are absorbed in our population, and 
can be controlled by constables instead of soldiers." 
Upon another phase of management Francis A. 
Walker wrote a little later : ^' There can be no ques- 
tion of national dignity involved in the treatment of 
savages by a civilized power. The proudest Anglo- 
Saxon will climb a tree with a bear behind him. . . . 
With wild men, as with wild beasts, the question 
whether to fight, coax, or run is a question merely 
of what is safest or easiest in the situation given." 
That responsibility for some decided action lay 
heavily upon the whites may be implied from the 
admission of Colonel Henry Inman, who knew the 
frontier well — ^Hhat, during more than a third of a 
century passed on the plains and in the mountains, he 
has never known of a war with the hostile tribes that 
was not caused by broken faith on the part of the 
United States or its agents." A professional Indian 
fighter, like Kit Carson, declared on oath that ^'as 
a general thing, the difficulties arise from aggressions 
on the part of the whites." 

In Congress all the interests involved in the Indian 



286 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

problem found spokesmen. The War and Interior 
departments had ample representation; the Western 
members commonly voiced the extreme opinion of 
the frontier ; Eastern men often spoke for the humani- 
tarian sentiment that saw much good in the Indian 
and much evil in his treatment. But withal, when it 
came to special action upon any situation, Congress 
felt its lack of information. The departments best 
informed were partisan and antagonistic. Even 
to-day it is a matter of high critical scholarship to 
determine, with the passions cooled off, truth and 
responsibility in such affairs as the Minnesota out- 
break, and the Chivington or the Fetterman massacre. 
To lighten in part its feeling of helplessness in the midst 
of interested parties Congress raised a committee 
of seven, three of the Senate and four of the House, 
in March, 1865, to investigate and report on the 
condition of the Indian tribes. The joint committee 
was resolved upon during a bitter and ill-informed 
debate on Chivington; while it sat, the Cheyenne 
war ended and the Sioux broke out; the committee 
reported in January, 1867. To facilitate its investi- 
gation it divided itself into three groups to visit the 
Pacific Slope, the southern plains, and the northern 
plains. Its report, with the accompanying testimony, 
fills over five hundred pages. In all the storm centres 
of the Indian West the committee sat, listened, and 
questioned. 

The Report on the Condition of the Indian Tribes 
gave a doleful view of the future from the Indians' 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 287 

standpoint. General Pope was quoted to the effect 
that the savages were rapidly dying off from wars, 
cruel treatment, unwise policy, and dishonest admin- 
istration, ^' and by steady and resistless encroach- 
ments of the white emigration towards the west, which 
is every day confining the Indians to narrower limits, 
and driving off or killing the game, their only means 
of subsistence.'^ To this catalogue of causes General 
Carleton, who must have believed his war of Apache 
and Navaho extermination a potent handmaid of 
providence, added: ^'The causes which the Almighty 
originates, when in their appointed time He wills 
that one race of man — as in races of lower animals — 
shall disappear off the face of the earth and give place 
to another race, and so on, in the great cycle traced 
out by Himself, which may be seen, but has reasons 
too deep to be fathomed by us. The races of mam- 
moths and mastodons, and the great sloths, came 
and passed away ; the red man of America is pass- 
ing away!" 

The committee believed that the wars with their 
incidents of slaughter and extermination by both sides, 
as occasion offered, were generally the result of white 
encroachments. It did not fall in with the growing 
opinion that the control of the tribes should be passed 
over to the War Department, but recommended in- 
stead a system of visiting boards, each including a 
civilian, a soldier, and an Assistant Indian Commis- 
sioner, for the regular inspection of the tribes. The 
recommendation of the committee came to naught 



288 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

in Congress, but the information it gathered, supple- 
menting the annual reports of the Commissioner 
of Indian Affairs and the special investigations of 
single wars, gave much additional weight to the 
belief that a crisis was at hand. 

Meanwhile, through 1866 and 1867, the Cheyenne 
and Sioux wars dragged on. The Powder River 
country continued to be a field of battle, with 
Powell's fight coming in the summer of 1867. 
In the spring of 1867 General Hancock destroyed 
a Cheyenne village at Pawnee Fork. Eastern 
opinion came to demand more forcefully that this 
fighting should stop. Western opinion was equally 
insistent that the Indian must go, while General 
Sherman believed that a part of its bellicose de- 
mand was due to a desire for ^Hhe profit resulting 
from military occupation.'' Certain it was that war 
had lasted for several years with no definite results, 
save to rouse the passions of the West, the revenge of 
the Indians, and the philanthropy of the East. The 
army had had its chance. Now the time had come 
for general, real attempts at peace. 

The fortieth Congress, beginning its life on March 
4, 1867, actually began its session at that time. Or- 
dinarily it would have waited until December, but 
the prevailing distrust of President Johnson and his 
reconstruction ideas induced it to convene as early 
as the law allowed. Among the most significant of its 
measures in this extra session was ''Mr. Henderson's 
bill for establishing peace with certain Indian tribes 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 289 

now at war with the United States/- which, in the view 
of the Nation J was a "practical measure for the secu- 
rity of travel through the territories and for the selec- 
tion of a new area sufficient to contain all the unset- 
tled tribes east of the Rocky Mountains." Senator 
Sherman had informed his brother of the prospect 
of this law, and the General had replied: ''The fact 
is, this contact of the two races has caused universal 
hostility, and the Indians operate in small, scattered 
bands, avoiding the posts and well-guarded trains and 
hitting little parties who are off their guard. I have 
a much heavier force on the plains, but they are so 
large that it is impossible to guard at all points, and 
the clamor for protection everywhere has prevented 
our being able to collect a large force to go into the 
country where we believe the Indians have hid their 
families; viz. up on the Yellowstone and down on the 
Red River." Sherman believed more in fighting than 
in treating at this time, yet he went on the commis- 
sion erected by the act of July 20, 1867. By this law 
four civilians, including the Indian Commissioner, and 
three generals of the army, were appointed to collect 
and deal with the hostile tribes, with three chief ob- 
jects in view: to remove the existing causes of com- 
plaint, to secure the safety of the various continental 
railways and the overland routes, and to work out 
some means for promoting Indian civilization with- 
out impeding the advance of the United States. To 
this last end they were to hunt for permanent homes 
for the tribes, which were to be off the lines of all 



290 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the railways then chartered, — the Union Pacific, 
the Northern Pacific, and the Atlantic and Pacific. 

The Peace Commission, thus organized, sat for 
fifteen months. When it rose at last, it had opened 
the way for the railways, so far as treaties could avail. 
It had persuaded many tribes to accept new and more 
remote reserves, but in its debates and negotiations 
the breach between military and civil control had 
widened, so that the Commission was at the end 
divided against itself. 

On August 6, 1867, the Commission organized at 
St. Louis and discussed plans for getting into touch 
with the tribes with whom it had to treat. ''The 
first difficulty presenting itself was to secure an inter- 
view with the chiefs and leading warriors of these 
hostile tribes. They were roaming over an immense 
country, thousands of miles in extent, and much of it 
unknown even to hunters and trappers of the white 
race. Small war parties constantly emerging from 
this vast extent of unexplored country would sud- 
denly strike the border settlements, killing the men 
and carrying off into captivity the women and chil- 
dren. Companies of workmen on the railroads, at 
points hundreds of miles from each other, would be 
attacked on the same day, perhaps in the same hour. 
Overland mail coaches could not be run without 
military escort, and railroad and mail stations un- 
guarded by soldiery were in perpetual danger. All 
safe transit across the plains had ceased. To go with- 
out soldiers was hazardous in the extreme; to go with 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 291 

them forbade reasonable hope of securing peaceful 
interviews with the enemy." Fortunately the Peace 
Commission contained within itself the most useful 
of assistants. General Sherman and Commissioner 
laylor sent out word to the Indians through the 
military posts and Indian agencies, notifying the 
tribes that the Commissioners desired to confer with 
them near Fort Laramie in September and Fort 
Lamed in October. 

The Fort Laramie conference bore no fruit during 
the summer of 1867. After inspecting conditions on 
the upper Missouri the Commissioners proceeded to 
Omaha m September and thence to North Platte 
station on the Union Pacific Railroad. Here thev 
met Swift Bear of the Brule Sioux and learned 
that the Sioux would not be ready to meet them 
until November. The Powder River War was still 
being fought by chiefs who could not be reached 
easily and whose delegations must be delayed 
When the Commissioners returned to Fort Laramie 
m November, they found matters little better. Red 
Cloud, who was the recognized leader of the Oglala 
and Brule Sioux and the hostile northern Cheyenne 
refused even to see the envoys, and sent them word': 
that hiswar against the whiteswas to save the valley 
of the Powder River, the only hunting ground left 
to his nation, from our intrusion. He assured us 
that whenever the military garrisons at Fort Philip 
Kearney and Fort C. F. Smith were withdrawn the 
war on his part would cease." Regretfully the 



292 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Commissioners left Fort Laramie, having seen no 
savages except a few non-hostile Crows, and havmg 
summoned Red Cloud to meet them during the fol- 
lowing summer, after asking " a truce or cessation of 
hostilities until the council could be held." 

The southern plains tribes were met at Medicme 
Lodge Creek some eighty miles south of the Arkan- 
sas River. Before the Commissioners arrived here 
General Sherman was summoned to Washington, his 
place being taken by General C. C. Augur, whose 
name makes the eighth signature to the pubhshed 
report. For some time after the Commissioners 
arrived the Cheyenne, sullen and suspicious, re- 
mained in their camp forty miles away from Medi- 
cine Lodge. But the Kiowa, Comanche, and 
Apache came to an agreement, while the others 
held off. On the 21st of October these ceded all 
their rights to occupy their great claims in the 
Southwest, the whole of the two panhandles of 
Texas and Oklahoma, and agreed to confine them- 
selves to a new reserve in the southwestern part of 
Indian Territory, between the Red River and the 
Washita, on lands taken from the Choctaw and 
Chickasaw in 1866. 

The Commissioners could not greatly blame the 
Arapaho and Cheyenne for their reluctance to 
treat. These had accepted in 1861 the triangular 
Sand Creek reserve in Colorado, where they had been 
massacred by Chivington in 1864. Whether rightly 
or not, they beUeved themselves betrayed, and the 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 293 

Indian Office sided with them. In 1865, after Sand 
Creek, they exchanged this tract for a new one in 
Kansas and Indian Territory, which was amended 
to nothingness when the Senate "^dded to the treaty 
the words, '^no part of the reservation shall be within 
the state of Kansas." They had left the former re- 
serve; the new one had not been given them; yet 
for two years after 1865 they had generally kept the 
peace. Sherman travelled through this country in 
the autumn of 1866 and " met no trouble whatever," 
although he heard rumors of Indian wars. In 1867, 
General Hancock had destroyed one of their villages 
on the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas, without prov- 
ocation, the Indians believed. After this there had 
been admitted war. The Indians had been on the 
war-path all the time, plundering the frontier and 
dodging the military parties, and were unable for 
some weeks to realize that the Peace Commissioners 
offered a change of policy. Yet finally these yielded 
to blandishment and overture, and signed, on Octo- 
ber 28, a treaty at Medicine Lodge. The new re- 
serve was a bit of barren land nearly destitute of 
wood and water, and containing many streams that 
were either brackish or dry during most of the year. 
It was in the Cherokee Outlet, between the Arkansas 
and Cimarron rivers. 

The Medicine Lodge treaties were the chief result of 
the summer's negotiations. The Peace Commission 
returned to Fort Laramie in the following spring to 
meet the reluctant northern tribes. The Sioux, the 



294 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Crows, and the Arapaho and Cheyenne who were 
alUed with them, made peace after the Commissioners 
had assented to the terms laid down by Red Cloud in 
1867. They had convinced themselves that the 
occupation of the Powder River Valley was both 
illegal and unjust, and accordingly the garrisons had 
been drawn out of the new forts. Much to the anger 
of Montana was this yielding. ^'With character- 
istic pusillanimity," wrote one of the pioneers, years 
later, denouncing the act, ^Hhe government ordered 
all the forts abandoned and the road closed to travel. '^ 
In the new Fort Laramie treaty of April 29, 1868, 
it was specifically agreed that the country east of the 
Big Horn Mountains was to be considered as unceded 
Indian territory; while the Sioux bound themselves 
to occupy as their permanent home the lands west of 
the Missouri, between the parallels of 43° and 46°, and 
east of the 104th meridian — an area coinciding to- 
day with the western end of South Dakota. Thus 
was begun the actual compression of the Sioux of 
the plains. 

The treaties made by the Peace Commissioners 
were the most important, but were not the only 
treaties of 1867 and 1868, looking towards the rehn- 
quishment by the Indians of lands along the rail- 
road's right of way. It had been found that rights 
of transit through the Indian Country, such as those 
secured at Laramie in 1851, were insufficient. The 
Indian must leave even the vicinity of the route of 
travel, for peace and his own good. 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 295 

Most important of the other tribes shoved away 
from the route were the Ute, Shoshoni, and Ban- 
nock, whose country lay across the great trail just 
west of the Rockies. The Ute, having given their 
name to the territory of Utah, were to be found 
south of the trail, between it and the lower waters 
of the Colorado. Their western bands were earliest 
in negotiation and were settled on reserves, the most 
important being on the Uintah River in northeast 
Utah, after 1861. The Colorado Ute began to treat 
in 1863, but did not make definite cessions until 1868, 
when the southwestern third of Colorado was set 
apart for them. Active life in Colorado territory 
was at the start confined to the mountains in the 
vicinity of Denver City, while the Indians were 
pushed down the slopes of the range on both sides. 
But as the eastern Sand Creek reserve soon had to be 
abolished, so Colorado began to growl at the western 
Ute reserve and to complain that indolent savages 
were given better treatment than white citizens. 
The Shoshoni and Bannock ranged from Fort Hall 
to the north and were visited by General Augur 
at Fort Bridger in the summer of 1868. As the re- 
sults of his gifts and diplomacy the former were 
pushed up to the Wind River reserve in Wyoming 
territory, while the latter were granted a home 
around Fort Hall. 

The friction with the Indians was heaviest near 
the line of the old Indian frontier and tended to be 
lighter towards the west. It was natural enough 



296 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

that on the eastern edge of the plains, where the 
tribes had been colonized and where Indian popu- 
lation was most dense, the difficulties should be 
greatest. Indeed the only wars which were suffi- 
ciently important to count as resistance to the west- 
ward movement were those of the plains tribes and 
were fought east of the continental divide. The 
mountain and western wars were episodes, isolated 
from the main movements. Yet these great plains 
that now had to be abandoned had been set aside 
as a permanent home for the race in pursuance of 
Monroe's policy. In the report of the Peace Com- 
missioners all agreed that the time had come to 
change it. 

The influence of the humanitarians dominated 
the report of the Commissioners, which was signed in 
January, 1868. Wherever possible, the side of the 
Indian was taken. The Chivington massacre was 
an 'indiscriminate slaughter,^' scarcely paralleled 
in the '^ records of the Indian barbarity''; General 
Hancock had ruthlessly destroyed the Cheyenne 
at Pawnee Fork, though himself in doubt as to 
the existence of a war: Fetterman had been killed 
because 'Hhe civil and military departments of our 
government cannot, or will not, understand each 
other." Apologies were made for Indian hostility, 
and the '^ revolting" history of the removal policy 
was described. It had been the result of this policy 
to promote barbarism rather than civilization. 
' ' But one thing then remains to be done with honor 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 297 

to the nation, and that is to select a district, or dis- 
tricts of country, as indicated by Congress, on which 
all the tribes east of the Rocky mountains may be 
gathered. For each district let a territorial govern- 
ment be established, with powers adapted to the 
ends designed. The governor should be a man of 
unquestioned integrity and purity of character; 
he should be paid such salary as to place him 
above temptation. '^ He should be given adequate 
powers to keep the peace and enforce a policy of 
progressive civilization. The belief that under 
American conditions the Indian problem was in- 
soluble was confirmed by this report of the Peace 
Commissioners, well informed and philanthropic as 
they were. After their condemnation of an existing 
removal policy, the only remedy which they could 
offer was another policy of concentration and 
removal. 

The Commissioners recommended that the Ind- 
ians should be colonized on two reserves, north and 
south of the railway lines respectively. The south- 
ern reserve was to be the old territory of the civilized 
tribes, known as Indian Territory, where the Com- 
missioners thought a total of 86,000 could be settled 
within a few years. A northern district might be 
located north of Nebraska, within the area which 
they later allotted to the Sioux; 54,000 could be 
colonized here. Individual savages might be allowed 
to own land and be incorporated among the citizens 
of the Western states, but most of the tribes ought 



298 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

to be settled in the two Indian territories, while this 
removal policy should be the last. 

Upon the vexed question of civilian or military 
control the Commissioners were divided. They 
believed that both War and Interior departments 
were too busy to give proper attention to the wards, 
and recommended an independent department for 
the Indians. In October, 1868, they reversed this 
report and, under military influence, spoke strongly 
for the incorporation of the Indian Office in the War 
Department. ^'We have now selected and provided 
reservations for all, off the great roads," wrote 
General Sherman to his brother in September, 1868. 
*^A11 who cling to their old hunting-grounds are 
hostile and will remain so till killed off. We will 
have a sort of predatory war for years, every now 
and then be shocked by the indiscriminate murder 
of travellers and settlers, but the country is so large, 
and the advantage of the Indians so great, that 
we cannot make a single war and end it. From 
the nature of things we must take chances and clean 
out Indians as we encounter them." Although it 
was the tendency of military control to provoke Ind- 
ian wars, the army was near the truth in its notion 
that Indians and whites could not live together. 

The way across the continent was opened by these 
treaties of 1867 and 1868, and the Union Pacific 
hurried to take advantage of it. The other Pacific 
railways. Northern Pacific and Atlantic and Pacific, 
were so slow in using their charters that hope in their 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 299 

construction was nearly abandoned, but the chief 
enterprise neared completion before the inauguration 
of President Grant. The new territory of Wyoming, 
rather than the statue of Columbus which Benton 
had foreseen, was perched upon the summit of the 
Rockies as its monument. 

Intelligent easterners had difficulty in keeping 
pace with western development during the decade 
of the Civil War. The United States itself had made 
no codification of Indian treaties since 1837, and 
allowed the law of tribal relations to remain scattered 
through a thousand volumes of government docu- 
ments. Even Indian agents and army ofiicers were 
often as ignorant of the facts as was the general 
public. ^'All Americans have some knowledge of 
the country west of the Mississippi,^' lamented the 
Nation in 1868, but 'Hhere is no book of travel relat- 
ing to those regions which does more than add to a 
mass of very desultory information. Few men have 
more than the most unconnected and unmethodical 
knowledge of the vast expanse of territory which 
lies beyond Kansas . . . [By] this time Leavenworth 
must have ceased to be in the West; probably, 
as we write, Denver has become an Eastern city, 
and day by day the Pacific Railroad is abolishing the 
marks that distinguish Western from Eastern life. . . . 
A man talks to us of the country west of the Rocky 
Mountains, and while he is talking, the Territory 
of Wyoming is established, of which neither he nor 
his auditors have before heard." 



300 



THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 



In that division of the plains which was sketched 
out in the fifties, the great amorphous eastern terri- 
tories of Kansas and Nebraska met on the summit 
of the Rockies the great western territories of 
Washington, Utah, and New Mexico. The gold 





o /' "^-T • — , 

> / Nevada | *-= ' 



\ 



UTAH TERR. 




\ 



o \.i.-.. \ ^.i 




The West in 1863 

The mining booms had completed the territorial divisions of the Southwest. 
In 1864 Idaho was reduced and Montana created. Wyoming followed in 1868. 

booms had broken up all of these. Arizona, Ne- 
vada, Idaho, Montana, Dakota, Colorado, had found 
their excuses for existence, while Kansas and Nev- 
ada entered the Union, with Nebraska following 
in 1867. Between the thirty-seventh and forty- 
first parallels Colorado fairly straddled the divide. 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 301 

To the north, in the region of the great river val- 
leys, — Green, Big Horn, Powder, Platte, and Sweet- 
water, — the precious metals were not found in 
quantities which justified exploitation earlier than 
1867. But in that year moderate discoveries on 
the Sweetwater and the arrival of the terminal 
camps of the Union Pacific gave plausibility to a 
scheme for a new territory. 

The Sweetwater mines, without causing any 
great excitement, brought a few hundred men to the 
vicinity of South Pass. A handful of towns was 
established, a county was organized, a newspaper 
was brought into life at Fort Bridger. If the railway 
had not appeared at the same time, the foundation 
for a territory would probably have been too slight. 
But the Union Pacific, which had ended at Julesburg 
early in 1867, extended its terminus to a new town, 
Cheyenne, in the summer, and to Laramie City in 
the spring of 1868. 

Cheyenne was laid out a few weeks before the 
Union Pacific advanced to its site. It had a better 
prospect of life than had most of the mushroom 
cities that accompanied the westward course of the 
railroad, because it was the natural junction point 
for Denver trade. Colorado had been much disap- 
pointed at its own failure to induce the Union Pacific 
managers to put Denver City on the main line of 
the road, and felt injured when compelled to do its 
business through Cheyenne. But just because of 
this, Cheyenne grew in the autumn of 1867 with a 



302 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

rapidity unusual even in the West. It was not an 
orderly or reputable population that it had during 
the first months of its existence, but, to its good 
fortune, the advance of the road to Laramie drew off 
the worst of the floating inhabitants early in 1868. 
Cheyenne was left with an overlarge town site, 
but with some real excuse for existence. Most of 
the terminal towns vanished completely when the 
railroad moved on. 

A new territory for the country north of Colorado 
had been talked about as early as 1861 . Since the cre- 
ation of Montana territory in 1864, this area had been 
attached, obviously only temporarily, to Dakota. 
Now, with the mining and railway influences at work, 
the population made appeal to the Dakota legislature 
and to Congress for independence. ^'Without oppo- 
sition or prolonged discussion," as Bancroft puts it, 
the new territory was created by Congress in July, 
1868. It was called Wyoming, just escaping the 
names of Lincoln and Cheyenne, and received as 
bounds the parallels of 41° and 45°, and the meridians 
of 27° and 34°, west of Washington. 

For several years after the Sioux treaties of 1868 
and the erection of Wyoming territory, the Indians 
of the northern plains kept the peace. The routes of 
travel had been opened, the white claim to the 
Powder River Valley had been surrendered, and a 
great northern reserve had been created in the 
Black Hills country of southern Dakota. All 
these, by lessening contact, removed the danger of 



PEACE COMMISSION AND THE OPEN WAY 303 

Indian friction. But the southern tribes were 
still uneasy, — treacherous or ill-treated, according 
as the sources vary, — and one more war was needed 
before they could be compelled to settle down. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

BLACK KETTLE ^S LAST RAID 

Of the four classes of persons whose interrela- 
tions determined the condition of the frontier, none 
admitted that it desired to provoke Indian wars. 
The tribes themselves consistently professed a wish 
to be allowed to remain at peace. The Indian 
agents lost their authority and many of their perqui- 
sites during war time. The army and the frontiers- 
men denied that they were belligerent. ^'I assert/' 
wrote Custer, ^^and all candid persons familiar 
with the subject will sustain the assertion, that of all 
classes of our population the army and the people 
living on the frontier entertain the greatest dread of 
an Indian war, and are willing to make the greatest 
sacrifices to avoid its horrors." To fix the responsi- 
bility for the wars which repeatedly occurred, despite 
the protestations of amiability on all sides, calls for 
the examination of individual episodes in large num- 
ber. It is easier to acquit the first two classes than 
the last two. There are enough instances in which 
the tribes were persuaded to promise and keep the 
peace to establish the belief that a policy combining 
benevolence, equity, and relentless firmness in pun- 
ishing wrong-doers, white or red, could have main- 

304 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 305 

tained friendly relations with ease. The Indian 
agents were hampered most by their inability to 
enforce the laws intrusted to them for execution, 
and by the slowness of the Senate in ratifying agree- 
ments and of Congress in voting supplies. The 
frontiersmen, with their isolated homesteads lying 
open to surprise and destruction, would seem to be 
sincere in their protestations; yet repeatedly they 
thrust themselves as squatters upon lands of un- 
quieted Indian title, while their personal relations 
with the red men were commonly marked by fear 
and hatred. The army, with greater honesty and 
better administration than the Indian Bureau, 
overdid its work, being unable to think of the Ind- 
ians as anything but public enemies and treating 
them with an arbitrary curtness that would have 
been dangerous even among intelligent whites. The 
history of the southwest Indians, after the Sand 
Creek massacre, illustrates well how tribes, not spe- 
cially ill-disposed, became the victims of circum- 
stances which led to their destruction. 

After the battle at Sand Creek, the southwest 
tribes agreed to a series of treaties in^l865 by which 
new reserves were promised them on the borderland 
of Kansas and Indian Territory. These treaties 
were so amended by the Senate that for a time 
the tribes had no admitted homes or rights save the 
guaranteed hunting privileges on the plains south of 
the Platte. They seem generally to have been peace- 
ful during 1866, in spite of the rather shabby treat- 



306 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

ment which the neglect of Congress procured for 
them. In 1867 uneasiness became apparent. Agent 
E. W. Wynkoop, of Sand Creek fame, was now in 
charge of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Apache tribes 
in the vicinity of Fort Larned, on the Santa Fe trail 
in Kansas. In 1866 they had ^^ complained of the 
government not having fulfilled its promises to them, 
and of numerous impositions practised upon them 
by the whites." Some of their younger braves had 
gone on the war-path. But Wynkoop claimed to 
have quieted them, and by March, 1867, thought 
that they were ^'well satisfied and quiet, and anxious 
to retain the peaceful relations now existing." 

The military authorities at Fort Dodge, farther 
up the Arkansas and near the old Santa Fe crossing, 
were less certain than Wynkoop that the Indians 
meant well. Little Raven, of the Arapaho, and 
Satanta, '^principal chief" of the Kiowa, were re- 
ported as sending in insulting messages to the troops, 
ordering them to cut no more wood, to leave the 
country, to keep wagons off the Santa Fe trail. 
Occasional thefts of stock and forays were reported 
along the trail. Custer thought that there was 
*^ positive evidence from the agents themselves" 
that the Indians were guilty, the trouble only being 
that Wynkoop charged the guilt on the Kiowa 
and Comanche, while J. H. Leavenworth, agent 
for these tribes, asserted their innocence and accused 
the wards of Wynkoop. 

The Department of the Missouri, in which these 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 307 

tribes resided, was under the command of Major- 
general Winfield Scott Hancock in the spring of 1867. 
With a desire to promote the tranquilUty of his com- 
mand, Hancock prepared for an expedition on the 
plains as early as the roads would permit. He wrote 
of this intention to both of the agents, asking them 
to accompany him, ^Ho show that the officers of the 
government are acting in harmony." His object 
was not necessarily war, but to impress upon the 
Indians his ability '^to chastise any tribes who may 
molest people who are travelling across the plains." 
In each of the letters he listed the complaints against 
the respective tribes — failure to deliver murderers, 
outrages on the Smoky Hill route in 1866, alliances 
with the Sioux, hostile incursions into Texas, and 
the specially barbarous Box murder. In this last 
affair one James Box had been murdered by the 
Kiowas, and his wife and five daughters carried off. 
The youngest of these, a baby, died in a few days, the 
mother stated, and they ^Hook her from me and 
threw her into a ravine." Ultimately the mother 
and three of the children were ransomed from the 
Kiowas after Mrs. Box and her eldest daughter, 
Margaret, had been passed around from chief to chief 
for more than two months. Custer wrote up this 
outrage with much exaggeration, but the facts were 
bad enough. 

With both agents present, Hancock advanced to 
Fort Larned. ''It is uncertain whether war will 
be the result of the expedition or not," he declared 



308 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

in general orders of March 26, 1867, thus admitting 
that a state of war did not at that time exist. ^'It 
will depend upon the temper and behavior of the 
Indians with whom we may come in contact. We go 
prepared for war and will make it if a proper occasion 
presents. '^ The tribes which he proposed to visit 
were roaming indiscriminately over the country 
traversed by the Santa Fe trail, in accordance with 
the treaties of 1865, which permitted them, until they 
should be settled upon their reserves, to hunt at 
will over the plains south of the Platte, subject only 
to the restriction that they must not camp within ten 
miles of the main roads and trails. It was Hancock's 
intention to enforce this last provision, and more, 
to insist '^upon their keeping off the main lines of 
travel, where their presence is calculated to bring 
about collisions with the whites." 

The first conference with the Indians was held at 
Fort Larned, where the ^'principal chiefs of the Dog 
Soldiers of the Cheyennes" had been assembled by 
Agent Wynkoop. Leavenworth thought that the 
chiefs here had been very friendly, but Wynkoop 
criticised the council as being held after sunset, 
which was contrary to Indian custom and calculated 
^Ho make them feel suspicious." At this council 
General Hancock reprimanded the chiefs and told 
them that he would visit their village, occupied by 
themselves and an almost equal number of Sioux; 
which village, said Wynkoop, ^'was 35 miles from 
any travelled road." ^^Why don't he confine the 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 309 

troops to the great line of travel ?'^ demanded Leaven- 
worth, whose wards had the same privilege of hunt- 
ing south of the Arkansas that those of Wynkoop 
had between the Arkansas and the Platte. So long 
as they camped ten miles from the roads, this was 
their right. 

Contrary to Wynkoop's urgings, Hancock led his 
command from Fort Larned on April 13, 1867, 
moving for the main Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux 
village on Pawnee Fork, thirty-five miles west of the 
post. With cavalry, infantry, artillery, and a pon- 
toon train, it was hard for him to assume any 
other appearance than that of war. Even the 
General's particular assurance, as Custer puts it, 
^Hhat he was not there to make war, but to promote 
peace," failed to convince the chiefs who had at- 
tended the night council. It was not a pleasant 
march. The snow was nearly a foot deep, fodder was 
scarce, and the Indian disposition was uncertain. 
Only a few had come in to the Fort Larned conference, 
and none appeared at camp after the first day's 
march. After this refusal to meet him, Hancock 
marched on to the village, in front of which he 
found some three hundred Indians drawn up in 
battle array. Fighting seemed imminent, but at 
last Roman Nose, Bull Bear, and other chiefs met 
Hancock between the lines and agreed upon an even- 
ing conference. It developed that the men alone 
were left at the Indian camp. Women and children, 
with all the movables they could handle, had fled out 



310 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

upon the snowy plains at the approach of the troops. 
Fear of another Sand Creek had caused it, said 
Wynkoop. But Hancock chose to regard this as 
evidence of a treacherous disposition, demanded that 
the fugitives return at once, and insisted upon en- 
camping near the village against the protest of the 
chiefs. Instead of bringing back their people, the 
men themselves abandoned the village that evening, 
while Hancock, learning of the flight, surrounded 
and took possession of it. The next morning, 
April 15, Custer was sent with cavalry in pursuit 
of the flying bands. Depredations occurring to the 
north of Pawnee Fork within a day or two, Hancock 
burned the village in retaliation and proceeded to 
Fort Dodge. Wynkoop insisted that the Cheyenne 
and Arapaho had been entirely innocent and that 
these injuries had been committed by the Sioux. '^ I 
have no doubt," he wrote, ''but that they think that 
war has been forced upon them." 

When Hancock started upon the plains, there was 
no war, but there was no doubt about its existence 
as the spring advanced. When the Peace Com- 
missioners of this year came with their protestations 
of benevolence for the Great Father, it was small 
wonder that the Cheyenne and Arapaho had to be 
coaxed into the camp on the Medicine Lodge Creek. 
And when the treaties there made failed of prompt 
execution by the United States, the war naturally 
dragged on in a desultory way during 1868 and 1869. 

In the spring of 1868 General Sheridan, who 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 311 

had succeeded Hancock in command of the Depart- 
ment of the Missouri, visited the posts at Fort Larned 
and Fort Dodge. Here on Pawnee and Walnut 
creeks most of the southwest Indians were congre- 
gated. Wynkoop, in February and April, reported 
them as happy and quiet. They were destitute, 
to be sure, and complained that the Commissioners 
at Medicine Lodge had promised them arms and 
ammunition which had not been delivered. Indeed, 
the treaty framed there had not yet been ratified. 
But he believed it possible to keep them contented 
and wean them from their old habits. To Sheridan 
the situation seemed less happy. He declined to 
hold a council with the complaining chiefs on the 
ground that the whole matter was yet in the hands 
of the Peace Commission, but he saw that the young 
men were chafing and turbulent and that frontier 
hostilities would accompany the summer buffalo hunt. 
There is little doubt of the destitution which pre- 
vailed among the plains tribes at this time. The 
rapid diminution of game was everywhere observ- 
able. The annuities at best afforded only partial 
relief, while Congress was irregular in providing 
funds. Three times during the spring the Commis- 
sioner prodded the Secretary of the Interior, who 
in turn prodded Congress, with the result that 
instead of the $1,000,000 asked for $500,000 were, 
in July, 1868, granted to be spent not by the Indian 
Office, but by the War Department. Three weeks 
later General Sherman created an organization for 



312 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

distributing this charity, placing the district south 
of Kansas in command of General Hazen. Mean- 
while, the time for making the spring issues of 
annuity goods had come. It was ordered in June 
that no arms or ammunition should be given to the 
Cheyenne and Arapaho because of their recent 
bad conduct; but in July the Commissioner, influ- 
enced by the great dissatisfaction on the part of the 
tribes, and fearing ^Hhat these Indians, by reason of 
such non-delivery of arms, ammunition, and goods, 
will commence hostilities against the whites in their 
vicinity, modified the order and telegraphed Agent 
Wynkoop that he might use his own discretion in the 
matter: ^'If you are satisfied that the issue of the 
arms and ammunition is necessary to preserve the 
peace, and that no evil will result from their delivery, 
let the Indians have them." A few days previously 
on July 20, Wynkoop had issued the ordinary sup- 
plies to his Arapaho and Apache, his Cheyenne 
refusing to take anything until they could have the 
guns as well. '^They felt much disappointed, but 
gave no evidence of being angry . . . and would 
wait with patience for the Great Father to take pity ( 
upon them." The permission from the Commis- 
sioner was welcomed by the agent, and approved 
by Thomas Murphy, his superintendent. Murphy 
had been ordered to Fort Larned to reenforce Wyn- 
koop's judgment. He held a council on August 1 
with Little Raven and the Arapaho and Apache, 
and issued them their arms. ^^ Raven and the other 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 313 

chiefs then promised that these arms should never 
be used against the whites, and Agent Wynkoop 
then dehvered to the Arapahoes 160 pistols, 80 
Lancaster rifles, 12 kegs of powder, IJ keg of lead, 
and 15,000 caps; and to the Apaches he gave 40 
pistols, 20 Lancaster rifles, 3 kegs of powder, 
J keg of lead, and 5000 caps.'^ The Cheyenne 
came in a few days later for their share, which 
Wynkoop handed over on the 9th. ''They were 
delighted at receiving the goods,'' he reported, 
''particularly the arms and ammunition, and 
never before have I known them to be better 
satisfied and express themselves as being so well 
contented." The fact that within three days mur- 
ders were committed by the Cheyenne on the Solo- 
mon and Saline forks throws doubt upon the sincer- 
ity of their protestations. 

The war party which commenced the active hostil- 
ities of 1868 at a time so well calculated to throw 
discredit upon the wisdom of the Indian Office, 
had left the Cheyenne village early in August, 
"smarting under their supposed wrongs," as Wyn- 
koop puts it. They were mostly Cheyenne, with 
a small number of Arapaho and a few visiting 
Sioux, about 200 in all. Little Raven's son and 
a brother of White Antelope, who died at Sand 
Creek, were with them ; Black Kettle is said to have 
been their leader. On August 7 some of them 
spent the evening at Fort Hays, where they held a 
powwow at the post. "Black Kettle loves his white 



314 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

soldier brothers, and his heart feels glad when he 
meets them and shakes their hands in friendship/' 
is the way the post-trader, Hill P. Wilson, reported 
his speech. '^The white soldiers ought to be glad 
all the time, because their ponies are so big and so 
strong, and because they have so many guns and 
so much to eat. . . . All other Indians may take 
the war trail, but Black Kettle will forever keep 
friendship with his white brothers." Three nights 
later they began to kill on Saline River, and on the 
11th they crossed to the Solomon. Some fifteen 
settlers were killed, and five women were carried off. 
Here this particular raid stopped, for the news 
had got abroad, and the frontier was instantly in 
arms. Various isolated forays occurred, so that 
Sheridan was sure he had a general war upon his 
hands. He believed nearly all the young men of 
the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Comanche to 
be in the war parties, the old women, men, and 
children remaining around the posts and profess- 
ing solicitous friendship. There were 6000 poten- 
tial warriors in all, and that he might better devote 
himself to suppressing them, Sheridan followed the 
Kansas Pacific to its terminus at Fort Hays and there 
established his headquarters in the field. 

The war of 1868 ranged over the whole frontier 
south of the Platte trail. It influenced the Peace 
Commission, at its final meeting in October, 1868, 
to repudiate many of the pacific theories of January 
and recommend that the Indians be handed over 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 315 

to the War Department. Sheridan, who had led 
the Commission to this conclusion, was in the field 
directing the movement. His policy embraced a 
concentration of the peaceful bands south of the 
Arkansas, and a relentless war against the rest. It 
is fairly clear that the war need not have come, had 
it not been for the cross-purposes ever apparent be- 
tween the Indian Office and the War Department, 
and even within the War Department itself. 
; At Fort Hays, Sheridan prepared for war. He had, 
at the start, about 2600 men, nearly equally divided 
among cavalry and infantry. Believing his force 
too small to cover the whole plains between Fort 
Hays and Denver, he called for reenforcements, 
receiving a part of the Fifth Cavalry and a regiment 
of Kansas volunteers. With enthusiasm this last 
addition was raised among the frontiersmen, where 
Indian fighting was popular; the governor of the 
state resigned his office to become its colonel. 
September and October were occupied in getting the 
troops together, keeping the trails open for traffic, 
and establishing," about a hundred miles south of 
Fort Dodge, a rendezvous which was known as 
Camp Supply. It was the intention to protect 
the frontier during the autumn, and to follow up 
the Indian villages after winter had fallen, catching 
the tribes when they would be concentrated and at a 
disadvantage. 

On October 15, 1868, Sherman, just from the 
Chicago meeting of the Peace Commissioners 



316 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

and angry because he had there been told that the 
army wanted war, gave Sheridan a free hand for the 
winter campaign. ^^As to ^extermination/ it is 
for the Indians themselves to determine. We don't 
want to exterminate or even to fight them. . . . 
The present war . . . was begun and carried on by 
the Indians in spite of our entreaties and in spite 
of our warnings, and the only question to us is, 
whether we shall allow the progress of our western 
settlements to be checked, and leave the Indians 
free to pursue their bloody career, or accept their 
war and fight them. . . . We . . . accept the war 
. . . and hereby resolve to make its end final. . . . 
I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our 
troops from doing what they deem proper on the 
spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges 
of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but 
will use all the powers confided to me to the end 
that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our 
civilization, shall not again be able to begin and 
carry on their barbarous warfare on any kind of pre- 
text that they may choose to allege." 

The plan of campaign provided that the main 
column, Custer in immediate command, should 
march from Fort Hays directly against the Indians, 
by way of Camp Supply; two smaller columns 
were to supplement this, one marching in on Indian 
Territory from New Mexico, and the other from 
Fort Lyon on the old Sand Creek reserve. Detach- 
ments of the chief column began to move in the 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 317 

middle of November, Custer reaching the depot at 
Camp Supply ahead of the rest, while the Kansas 
volunteers lost themselves in heavy snow-storms. 
On November 23 Custer was ordered out of Camp 
Supply, on the north fork of the Canadian, to follow 
a fresh trail which led southwest towards the Washita 
River, near the eastern line of Texas. He pushed on 
as rapidly as twelve inches of snow would allow, 
discovering in the early morning of November 27 a 
large camp in the valley of the Washita. 

It was Black Kettle's camp of Cheyenne and 
Arapaho that they had found in a strip of heavy 
timber along the river. After reconnoitring Custer 
divided his force into four columns for simultaneous 
attacks upon the sleeping village. At daybreak 
'^my men charged the village and reached the lodges 
before the Indians were aware of our presence. The 
moment the charge was ordered the band struck 
up ^ Garry Owen,' and with cheers that strongly 
reminded me of scenes during the war, every trooper, 
led by his officer, rushed towards the village." For 
several hours a promiscuous fight raged up and down 
the ravine, with Indians everywhere taking to cover, 
only to be prodded out again. Fifty-one lodges in all 
fell into Custer's hands; 103 dead Indians, includ- 
ing Black Kettle himself, were found later. '^We 
captured in good condition 875 horses, ponies, and 
mules; 241 saddles, some of very fine and costly 
workmanship; 573 buffalo robes, 390 buffalo skins 
for lodges, 160 untanned robes, 210 axes, 140 



318 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

hatchets, 35 revolvers, 47 rifles, 535 pounds of 
powder, 1050 pounds of lead, 4000 arrows and arrow- 
heads, 75 spears, 90 bullet moulds, 35 bows and 
quivers, 12 shields, 300 pounds of bullets, 775 
lariats, 940 buckskin saddle-bags, 470 blankets, 
93 coats, 700 pounds of tobacco.'^ 

As the day advanced, Custer's triumph seemed 
likely to turn into defeat. The Cheyenne village 
proved to be only the last of a long string of villages 
that extended down the Washita for fifteen miles or 
more, and whose braves rode up by hundreds to see 
the fight. A general engagement was avoided, how- 
ever, and with better luck and more discretion than 
he was one day to have, Custer marched back to 
Camp Supply on December 3, his band playing 
gayly the tune of battle, '^ Garry Owen." The 
commander in his triumphal procession was followed 
by his scouts and trailers, and the captives of his 
prowess — a long train of Indian widows and orphans. 

The decisive blow which broke the power of the 
southwest tribes had been struck, and Black Kettle 
had carried on his last raid, — if indeed he had carried 
on this one at all — but as the reports came in it 
became evident that the merits of the triumph were 
in doubt. The Eastern humanitarians were shocked 
at the cold-blooded attack upon a camp of sleeping 
men, women, and children, forgetting that if Indians 
were to be fought this was the most successful way to 
do it, and was no shock to the Indians' own ideals 
of warfare and attack. The deeper question was 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 319 

whether this camp was actually hostile, whether the 
tribes had not abandoned the war-path in good faith, 
whether it was fair to crush a tribe that with apparent 
earnestness begged peace because it could not control 
the excesses of some of its own braves. It became 
certain, at least, that the War Department itself 
had fallen victim to that vice with which it had so 
often reproached the Indian Office — failure to 
produce a harmony of action among several branches 
of the service. 

The Indian Office had no responsibility for the 
battle of the Washita. It had indeed issued arms 
to the Cheyenne in August, but only with the ap- 
proval of the military officer commanding Forts 
Larned and Dodge, General Alfred Sully, ^'an 
officer of long experience in Indian affairs.'^ In the 
early summer all the tribes had been near these forts 
and along the Santa Fe trail. After Congress had 
voted its half million to feed the hungry, Sherman 
had ordered that the peaceful hungry among the 
southern tribes should be moved from this locality 
to the vicinity of old Fort Cobb, in the west end of 
Indian Territory on the Washita River. 

During September, while Sheridan was gathering 
his armament at Fort Hays, Sherman was ordering 
the agents to take their peaceful charges to Fort 
Cobb. With the major portion of the tribes at war 
it would be impossible for the troops to make any 
discrimination unless there should be an absolute 
separation between the well-disposed and the war- 



320 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

like. He proposed to allow the former a reasonable 
time to get to their new abode and then beg the 
President for an order ^'declaring all Indians who 
remain outside of their lawful reservations" to be 
outlaws. He believed that by going to war these 
tribes had violated their hunting rights. Superin- 
tendent Murphy thought he saw another Sand 
Creek in these preparations. Here were the tribes 
ordered to Fort Cobb ; their fall annuity goods were 
on the way thither for distribution; and now the 
military column was marching in the same direction. 

In the meantime General W. B. Hazen had arrived 
at Fort Cobb on November 7 and had immediately 
voiced his fear that ^'General Sheridan, acting under 
the impression of hostiles, may attack bands of Co- 
manche and Kiowa before they reach this point." 
He found, however, most of these tribes, who had not 
gone to war this season, encamped within reach on 
the Canadian and Washita rivers, — 5000 of the Co- 
manche and 1500 of the Kiowa. Within a few days 
Cheyenne and Arapaho began to join the settle- 
ments in the district. Black Kettle bringing in his 
band to the Washita, forty miles east of Antelope 
Hills, and coming in person to Fort Cobb for an 
interview with General Hazen on November 20. 

"I have always done my best," he protested, ''to 
keep my young men quiet, but some will not listen, 
and since the fighting began I have not been able to 
keep them all at home. But we all want peace." 
To which added Big Mouth, of the Arapaho: ''I 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 321 

came to you because I wish to do right. ... I do not 
want war, and my people do not, but although we 
have come back south of the Arkansas, the soldiers 
follow us and continue fighting, and we want you to 
send out and stop these soldiers from coming against 
us.^^ 

To these, General Hazen, fearful as he was of an 
unjust attack, responded with caution. Sherman 
had spoken of Fort Cobb in his orders to Sheridan, as 
'^ aimed to hold out the olive branch with one hand 
and the sword in the other. But it is not thereby 
intended that any hostile Indians shall make use 
of that establishment as a refuge from just punish- 
ment for acts already done. Your military control 
over that reservation is as perfect as over Kansas, and 
if hostile Indians retreat within that reservation, . . . 
they may be followed even to Fort Cobb, captured, 
and punished. '^ It is difficult to see what could 
constitute the fact of peaceful intent if coming in 
to Fort Cobb did not. But Hazen gave to Black 
Kettle cold comfort: ^^I am sent here as a peace 
chief; all here is to be peace; but north of the 
Arkansas is General Sheridan, the great war chief, and 
I do not control him ; and he has all the soldiers who 
are fighting the Arapahoes and Cheyennes. ... If 
the soldiers come to fight, you must remember they 
are not from me, but from that great war chief, and 
with him you must make peace. ... I cannot stop 
the war. . . . You must not come in again unless I 
send for you, and you must keep well out beyond 



322 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the friendly Kiowas and Comanches. '^ So he sent 
the suitors away and wrote, on November 22, to 
Sherman for more specific instructions covering these 
cases. He beheved that Black Kettle and Big Mouth 
were themselves sincere, but doubted their control 
over their bands. These were the bands which 
Custer destroyed before the week was out, and it is 
probable that during the fight they were reenforced 
by braves from the friendly lodges of Sat ant a' s 
Kiowa and Little Raven's Arapaho. 

Whatever might have been a wise policy in treating 
semi-hostile Indian tribes, this one was certainly un- 
satisfactory. It is doubtful whether the war was ever 
so great as Sherman imagined it. The injured tribes 
were unquestionably drawn to Fort Cobb by a desire 
for safety; the army was in the position of seeming 
to use the olive branch to assemble the Indians in or- 
der that the sword might the better disperse them. 
There is reasonable doubt whether Black Kettle 
had anything to do with the forays. Murphy be- 
lieved in him and cited many evidences of his friendly 
disposition, while Wynkoop asserted positively that 
he had been encamped on Pawnee Fork all through 
the time when he was alleged to have been committing 
depredations on the Saline. The army alone had 
been no more successful in producing obvious justice 
than the army and Indian Office together had been. 
Yet whatever the merits of the case, the power of the 
Cheyenne and their neighbors was permanently gone. 

During the winter of 1868-1869 Sheridan's army 



BLACK KETTLE'S LAST RAID 323 

remained in the vicinity of Fort Cobb, gathering the 
remnants of the shattered tribes in upon their reser- 
vation. The Kiowa and Comanche were placed at 
last on the lands awarded them at the Medicine Lodge 
treaties, while the Arapaho and Cheyenne once 
more had their abiding-place changed in August, 1869, 
and were settled down along the upper waters of the 
Washita, around the valley of their late defeat. 

The long controversy between the War and Interior 
departments over the management of the tribes en- 
tered upon a new stage with the inauguration of 
Grant in 1869. One of the earliest measures of his 
administration was a bill erecting a board of civil- 
ian Indian commissioners to advise the Indian De- 
partment and promote the civilization of the tribes. 
A generous grant of two millions accompanied the 
act. More care was used in the appointment of 
agents than had hitherto been taken, and the im- 
mediate results seemed good when the Commissioner 
wrote his annual report in December, 1869. But the 
worst of the troubles with the Indians of the plains 
was over, so that without special effort peace could 
now have been the result. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 

Twenty years before the great tribes of the plains 
made their last stand in front of the invading white 
man overland travel had begun; ten years before, 
Congress, under the inspiration of the prophetic 
Whitney and the leadership of more practical men, 
had provided for a survey of railroad routes along 
the trails; on the eve of the struggle the earliest con- 
tinental railway had received its charter ;f and the 
struggle had temporarily ceased while Congress, in 
1867, sent out its Peace Commission to prepare an 
open way. That the tribes must yield was as inevi- 
table as it was that their yielding must be ungracious 
and destructive to them. Too weak to compel their 
enemy to respect their rights, and uncertain what their 
rights were, they were too low in intelligence to realize 
that the more they struggled, the worse would be their 
suffering. So they struggled on, during the years in 
which the iron band was put across the continent. 
Its completion and their subjection came in 1869. 

After years of tedious debate the earliest of the 
Pacific railways was chartered in 1862. The with- 
drawal of southern claims had made possible an 
agreement upon a route, while the spirit of nationality 

324 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 325 

engendered by the Civil War gave to the project its 
final impetus. Under the management of the Cen- 
tral Pacific of California, the Union Pacific, and two 
or three border railways, provision was made for a 
road from the Iowa border to California. Land grants 
and bond subsidies were for two years dangled 
before the capitalists of America in the vain attempt 
to entice them to construct it. Only after these 
were increased in 1864 did active organization begin, 
while at the end of 1865 but forty miles of the Union 
Pacific had been built. 

Building a railroad from the Missouri River to the 
Pacific Ocean was easily the greatest engineering feat 
that America had undertaken. In their day the 
Cumberland Road, and the Erie Canal, and the Penn- 
sylvania Portage Railway had ranked among the 
American wonders, but none of these had been ac- 
companied by the difficult problems that bristled 
along the eighteen hundred miles of track that must 
be laid across plain and desert, through hostile Indian 
country and over mountains. Worse yet, the road 
could hope for little aid from the country through 
which it ran. Except for the small colonies at Carson, 
Salt Lake, and Denver, the last of which it missed by 
a hundred miles, its course lay through unsettled 
wilderness for nearly the whole distance. Like the 
trusses of a cantilever, its advancing ends projected 
themselves across the continent, relying, up to the 
moment of joining, upon the firm anchorage of the 
termini in the settled lands of Iowa and California. 



326 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Equally trying, though different in variety, were the 
difficulties attendant upon construction at either end. 
The impetus which Judah had given to the Central 
Pacific had started the western end of the system 
two years ahead of the eastern, but had not produced 
great results at first. It was hard work building east 
into the Sierra Nevadas, climbing the gullies, bridg- 
ing, tunnelling, filling, inch by inch, to keep the grade 
down and the curvature out. Twenty miles a year 
only were completed in 1863, 1864, and 1865, thirty 
in 1866, and forty-six in 1867 — one hundred and 
thirty-six miles during the first five years of work. 
Nature had done her best to impede the progress of 
the road by thrusting mountains and valleys across 
its route. But she had covered the mountains with 
timber and filled them with stone, so that materials of 
construction were easily accessible along all of the 
costliest part of the line. Bridges and trestles could 
be built anywhere with local material. The labor 
problem vexed the Central Pacific managers at the 
start. It was a scanty and inefficient supply of 
workmen that existed in California when construction 
began. Like all new countries, California possessed 
more work than workmen. Economic independence 
was to be had almost for the asking. Free land and 
fertile soil made it unnecessary for men to work for 
hire. The slight results of the first five years were 
due as much to lack of labor as to refractory roadway 
or political opposition. But by 1865 the employ- 
ment of Chinese laborers began. Coolies imported by 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 327 

the thousand and ably directed by Charles Crocker, 
who was the most active constructor, brought 
a new rapidity into construction. ^' I used to go 
up and down that road in my car like a mad 
bull," Crocker dictated to Bancroft's stenographer, 
" stopping along wherever there was anything amiss, 
and raising Old Nick with the boys that were not up 
to time." With roadbed once graded new troubles 
began. California could manufacture no iron. Roll- 
ing stock and rails had to be imported from Europe 
or the East, and came to San Francisco after the 
costly sea voyage, via Panama or the Horn. But 
the men directing the Central Pacific — Stanford, 
Crocker, Huntington, and the rest — rose to the diffi- 
culties, and once they had passed the mountains, fairly 
romped across the Nevada desert in the race for sub- 
sidies. 

The eastern end started nearer to a base of supplies 
than did the California terminus, yet until 1867 no 
railroad from the East reached Council Bluffs, where 
the President had determined that the Union Pacific 
should begin. There had been railway connection 
to the Missouri River at St. Joseph since 1859, and 
various lines were hurrying across Iowa in the sixties, 
but for more than two years of construction the Union 
Pacific had to get rolling stock and iron from the 
Missouri steamers or the laborious prairie schooners. 
Until its railway connection was established its 
difficulty in this respect was only less great than that 
of the Central Pacific. The compensation of the 



328 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Union Pacific came, however, in its roadbed. Fol- 
lowing the old Platte trail, flat and smooth as the 
best highways, its construction gangs could do the light 
grading as rapidly as the finished single track could 
deliver the rails at its growing end. But for the need- 
ful culverts and trestles there was little material at 
hand. The willows and cottonwood lining the river 
would not do. The Central Pacific could cut its 
wood as it needed it, often within sight of its track. 
The Union Pacific had to haul much of its wood and 
stone, like its iron, from its eastern terminus. 

The labor problem of the Union Pacific was in- 
timately connected with the solution of its Indian 
problem. The Central Pacific had almost no trouble 
with the decadent tribes through whom it ran, but 
the Union Pacific was built during the very years 
when the great plains were most disturbed and hos- 
tile forays were most frequent. Its employees con- 
tained large elements of the newly arrived Irish and 
of the recently discharged veterans of the Civil War. 
General Dodge, who was its chief engineer, has de- 
scribed not only the military guards who ^^ stacked 
their arms on the dump and were ready at a moment's 
warning to fall in and fight," but the military capacity 
of the construction gangs themselves. The ^Hrack 
train could arm a thousand men at a word," and 
from chief constructor down to chief spiker ^^ could 
be commanded by experienced officers of every rank, 
from general to a captain. They had served five 
years at the front, and over half of the men had 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 329 

shouldered a musket in many battles. An illustra- 
tion of this came to me after our track had passed 
Plum Creek, 200 miles west of the Missouri River. 
The Indians had captured a freight train and were 
in possession of it and its crews." Dodge came to 
the rescue in his car, '' sl travelling arsenal/' with 
twenty-odd men, most of whom were strangers to 
him; yet ^^ when I called upon them to fall in, to go 
forward and retake the train, every man on the train 
went into line, and by his position showed that he 
was a soldier. ... I gave the order to deploy as 
skirmishers, and at the command they went forward 
as steadily and in as good order as we had seen the 
old soldiers climb the face of Kenesaw under fire. " 

By an act passed in July, 1866, Congress did much 
to accelerate the construction of the road. Heretofore 
the junction point had been in the Nevada Desert, 
a hundred and fifty miles east of the California line. 
It was now provided that each road might build until 
it met the other. Since the mountain section, with 
the highest accompanying subsidies, was at hand, 
each of the companies was spurred on by its desire 
to get as much land and as many bonds as possible. 
The race which began in the autumn of 1866 ended 
only with the completion of the track in 1869. A 
mile a day had seemed like quick work at the start; 
seven or eight a day were laid before the end. 

The English traveller. Bell, who published his 
New Tracks in North America in 1869, found some- 
where an enthusiastic quotation admirably descrip- 



330 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

tive of the process. " Track-laying on the Union 
Pacific is a science/' it read, ^^and we pundits of the 
Far East stood upon that embankment, only about 
a thousand miles this side of sunset, and backed 
westward before that hurrying corps of sturdy opera- 
tives with mingled feelings of amusement, curiosity, 
and profound respect. On they came. A light car, 
drawn by a single horse, gallops up to the front with 
its load of rails. Two men seize the end of a rail and 
start forward, the rest of the gang taking hold by twos 
until it is clear of the car. They come forward at a 
run. At the word of command, the rail is dropped in 
its place, right side up, with care, while the same 
process goes on at the other side of the car. Less 
than thirty seconds to a rail for each gang, and so four 
rails go down to the minute! Quick work, you say, 
but the fellows on the U. P. are tremendously in 
earnest. The moment the car is empty it is tipped 
over on the side of the track to let the next loaded car 
pass it, and then it is tipped back again; and it is a 
sight to see it go flying back for another load, pro- 
pelled by a horse at full gallop at the end of 60 
or 80 feet of rope, ridden by a young Jehu, who 
drives furiously. Close behind the first gang come 
the gangers, spikers, and bolters, and a lively time 
they make of it. It is a grand Anvil Chorus that 
these sturdy sledges are playing across the plains. 
It is in a triple time, three strokes to a spike. 
There are ten spikes to a rail, four hundred rails to 
a mile, eighteen hundred miles to San Francisco. 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 331 

That's the sum, what is the quotient ? Twenty-one 
milHon times are those sledges to be swung — 
twenty-one miUion times are they to come down 
with their sharp punctuation, before the great work 
of modern America is complete! '^ 

Handling, housing, and feeding the thousands of 
laborers who built the road was no mean problem. 
Ten years earlier the builders of the Illinois Central 
had complained because their road from Galena and 
Chicago to Cairo ran generally through an unin- 
habited country upon which they could not live as 
they went along. Much more the continental rail- 
ways, building rapidly away from the settlements, 
were forced to carry their dwellings with them. 
Their commissariat was as important as their general 
offices. 

An acquaintance of Bell told of standing where 
Cheyenne now is and seeing a long freight train 
arrive ^4aden with frame houses, boards, furniture, 
palings, old tents, and all the rubbish" of a mush- 
room city. '^The guard jumped off his van, and see- 
ing some friends on the platform, called out with a 
flourish, ^Gentlemen, here's Julesburg. ' " The head 
of the serpentine track, sometimes indeed ^^crookeder 
than the horn that was blown around the walls of 
Jericho, " was the terminal town; its tongue was the 
stretch of track thrust a few miles in advance of the 
head; repeatedly as the tongue darted out the head 
followed, leaving across the plains a series of scars, 
marking the spots where it had rested for a time. 



332 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Every few weeks the town was packed upon a freight 
train and moved fifty or sixty miles to the new end 
of the track. Its vagrant population followed it. It 
was at Julesburg early in 1867; at Cheyenne in the 
end of the year; at Laramie City the following spring. 
Always it was the most disreputably picturesque 
spot on the anatomy of the railroad. 

In the fall of 1868 ^'Hell on Wheels/' as Samuel 
Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, appro- 
priately designated the terminal town, was at Ben- 
ton, Wyoming, six hundred and ninety-eight miles 
from Omaha and near the military reservation 
at Fort Steele. In the very midst of the gray des- 
ert, with sand ankle-deep in its streets, the town 
stood dusty white — ^^a new arrival with black 
clothes looked like nothing so much as a cockroach 
struggling through a flour barrel. '^ A less promising 
location could hardly have been found, yet within 
two weeks there had sprung up a city of three thou- 
sand people with ordinances and government suited 
to its size, and facilities for vice ample for all. The 
needs of the road accounted for it : to the east the 
road was operating for passengers and freight; to 
the west it was yet constructing track. Here was 
the end of rail travel and the beginning of the stage 
routes to the coast and the mines. Two years 
earlier the similar point had been at Fort Kearney, 
Nebraska. 

The city of tents and shacks contained, according 
to the count of John H. Beadle, a peripatetic j ournalist, 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 333 

twenty-three saloons and five dance houses. It 
had all the worst details of the mining camp. Gam- 
bling and rowdyism were the order of day and night. 
Its great institution was the " ' Big Tent/ some- 
times, with equal truth but less politeness, called 
the ^Gamblers' Tent.' '^ This resort was a hundred 
feet long by forty wide, well floored, and given over 
to drinking, dancing, and gambling. The sumptu- 
ous bar provided refreshment much desired in a dry 
alkali country; all the games known to the profes- 
sional gambler were in full blast; women, often fair 
and well-dressed, were there to gather in what the 
bartender and faro-dealer missed. Whence came 
these people, and how they learned their trade, was 
a mystery to Bowles. " Hell would appear to have 
been raked to furnish them," he said, ^^and to it they 
must have naturally returned after graduating here, 
fitted for its highest seats and most diabolical ser- 
vice." 

Behind the terminal town real estate disappoint- 
ments, like beads, were strung along the cord of 
rails. In advance of the construction gangs land 
companies would commonly survey town sites in 
preparation for a boom. Brisk speculation in corner 
lots was a form of gambling in which real money was 
often lost and honest hopes were regularly shattered. 
Each town had its advocates who believed it was to 
be the great emporium of the West. Yet generally, 
as the railroad moved on, the town relapsed into a 
condition of deserted prairie, with only the street 



334 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

lines and debris to remind it of its past. Omaha, 
though Beadle thought in 1868 that no other ^^ place 
in America had been so well lied about/ ^ and Council 
Bluffs retained a share of greatness because of their 
strategic position at the commencement of the main 
line. Tied together in 1872 by the great iron bridge 
of the Union Pacific, their relations were as har- 
monious as those of the cats of Kilkenny, as they 
quarrelled over the claims of each to be the real 
terminus. But the future of both was assured when 
the eastern roads began to run in to get connections 
with the West. Cheyenne, too, remained a city 
of some consequence because the Denver Pacific 
branched off at this point to serve the Pike's Peak 
region. But the names of most of the other one- 
time terminal towns were writ in sand. 

The progress of construction of the road after 
1866 was rapid enough. At the end of 1865, though 
the Central Pacific had started two years before the 
Union Pacific, it had completed only sixty miles of 
track, to the latter's forty. During 1866 the Central 
Pacific built thirty laborious miles over the moun- 
tains, and in 1867, forty-six miles, while in the same 
two years the Union Pacific built five hundred. In 
1868, the western road, now past its worst troubles, 
added more than 360 to its mileage; the Union 
Pacific, unchecked by the continental divide, mak- 
ing a new record of 425. By May 10, 1869, the line 
was done, 1776 miles from Omaha to Sacramento. 
For the last sixteen months of the continental race 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 335 

the two roads together had built more than two and 
a half miles for every working day. Never before 
had construction been systematized so highly or the 
rewards for speed been so great. 
. Whether regarded as an economic achievement or 
a national work, the building of the road deserved 
the attention it received; yet it was scarcely finished 
before the scandal-monger was at work. Beadle had 
written a chapter full of ^'floridly complimentary 
notices'' of the men who had made possible the feat, 
but before he went to press their reputations were 
blasted, and he thought it safest 'Ho mention no 
names." ''Never praise a man," he declared in 
disgust, "or name your children after him, till he 
is dead." Before the end of Grant's first administra- 
tion the Credit Mohilier scandal proved that men, 
high in the national government, had speculated in 
the project whose success depended on their votes. 
That many of them had been guilty of indiscretion, 
was perfectly clear, but they had done only what 
many of their greatest predecessors had done. Their 
real fault was made more prominent by their misfor- 
tune in being caught by an aroused national con- 
science which suddenly awoke to heed a call that it 
had ever disregarded in the past. 

The junction point for the Union Pacific and 
Central Pacific had been variously fixed by the 
acts of 1862 and 1864. In 1866 it was left open to 
fortune or enterprise, and had not Congress inter- 
vened in 1869 it might never have existed. In 



336 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

their rush for the land grants the two rivals hurried 
on their surveys to the vicinity of Great Salt Lake, 
where their advancing ends began to overlap, and 
continued parallel for scores of miles. Congress, 
noticing their indisposition to agree upon a junction, 
intervened in the spring of 1869, ordering the two to 
bring their race to an end at Promontory Point, a 
few miles northwest of Ogden on the shore of the 
lake. Here in May, 1869, the junction was cele- 
brated in due form. 

Since the ^^ Seneca Chief carried DeWitt Clinton 
from Buffalo to the Atlantic in 1825, it has been the 
custom to make the completion of a new road an 
occasion for formal celebration. On the 10th of 
May, 1869, the whole United States stood still to 
signalize the junction of the tracks. The date had 
been agreed upon by the railways on short notice, 
and small parties of their officials. Governor Stanford 
for the Central Pacific and President Dillon for the 
Union Pacific, had come to the scene of activities. 
The latter wrote up the ^^ Driving the Last Spike'' 
for one of the magazines twenty years later, telling 
how General Dodge worked all night of the 9th, lay- 
ing his final section, and how at noon on the appointed 
day the last two rails were spiked to a tie of California 
laurel. The immediate audience was small, including 
few beyond the railway officials, but within hearing 
of the telegraphic taps that told of the last blows 
of the sledge-hammer was much of the United States. 
President Dillon told the story as it was given in the 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 337 

leading paragraph of the Nation of the Thursday 
after. ^'So far as we have seen them/' wrote God- 
kin's censor of American morals, ^'the speeches, 
prayers, and congratulatory telegrams ... all broke 
down under the weight of the occasion, and it is a 
relief to turn from them to the telegrams which passed 
between the various operators, and to get their 
flavor of business and the West. ^Keep quiet,' the 
Omaha man says, when the operators all over the 
Union begin to pester him with questions. 'When 
the last spike is driven at Promontory Point, we 
will say ''Done.'" By-and-by he sends the word, 
'Hats off! Prayer is being offered.' Then at the 
end of thirteen minutes he says, apparently with a 
sense of having at last come to business : ' We have 
got done praying. The spike is about to be presented. ' 
. . . Before sunset the event was celebrated, not 
very noisily but very heartily, throughout the 
country. Chicago made a procession seven miles 
long; New York hung out bunting, fired a hundred 
guns, and held thanksgiving services in Trinity; 
Philadelphia rang the old Liberty Bell; Buffalo 
sang the 'Star-spangled Banner'; and many towns 
burnt powder in honor of the consummation of a 
work which, as all good Americans believe, gives us a 
road to the Indies, a means of making the United 
States a halfway house between the East and West, 
and last, but not least, a new guarantee of the per- 
petuity of the Union as it is." 
No single event in the struggle for the last frontier 



338 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

had a greater significance for the immediate audience, 
or for posterity, than this act of completion. Bret 
Harte, poet of the occasion, asked the question that 
all were framing : — 

" What was it the Engines said, 
Pilots touching, head to head 
Facing on the single track, 
Half a world behind each back ? " 

But he was able to answer only a part of it. His 
western engine retorted to the eastern : — 

" ' You brag of the East ! You do ? 
Why, / bring the East to you ! 
All the Orient, all Cathay, 
Find through me the shortest way ; 
And the sun you follow here 
Rises in my hemisphere. 
Really, — if one must be rude, — 
Length, my friend, ain't longitude.''* 

The oriental trade of Whitney and Benton yet 
dazzled the eyes of the men who built the road, blind- 
ing them to the prosaic millions lying beneath their 
feet. The East and West were indeed united; but, 
more important, the intervening frontier was ceasing 
to divide. When the road was undertaken, men 
thought naturally of the East and the Pacific Coast, 
unhappily separated by the waste of the mountains 
and the desert and the Indian Country. The mining 
flurries of the early sixties raised a hope that this 



THE FIRST OF THE RAILWAYS 339 

intervening land might not all be waste. As the 
railway had advanced, settlement had marched with 
it, the two treading upon the heels of the Peace 
Commissioners sent out to lure away the Indians. 
With the opening of the road the new period of 
national assimilation of the continent had begun. 
In fifteen years more, as other roads followed, there 
had ceased to be any unbridgeable gap between the 
East and West, and the frontier had disappeared. 



CHAPTER XX 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 



Through the negotiations of the Peace Com- 
missioners of 1867 and 1868, and the opening of the 
Pacific railway in 1869, the Indians of the plains 
had been cleanly split into two main groups which 
had their centres in the Sioux reserve in southwest 
Dakota and the old Indian Territory. The advance 
of a new wave of population had followed along the 
road thus opened, pushing settlements into central 
Nebraska and Kansas. Through the latter state the 
Union Pacific, Eastern Division, better known as the 
Kansas Pacific, had been thrust west to Denver, 
where it arrived before 1870 was over. With this 
advance of civilized life upon the plains it became 
clear that the old Indian policy was gone for good, 
and that the idea of a permanent country, where the 
tribes, free from white contact, could continue their 
nomadic existence, had broken down. The old Ind- 
ian policy had been based upon the permanence 
of this condition, but with the white advance troops 
for police had been added, while the loud bickerings 
between the military authorities, thus superimposed, 
and the Indian Office, which regarded itself as the 

340 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 341 

rightful custodian of the problem, proved to be the 
overture to a new policy. Said Grant, in his first 
annual message in 1869: ''No matter what ought to 
be the relations between such [civilized] settlements 
and the aborigines, the fact is they do not harmonize 
well, and one or the other has to give way in the end. 
A situation which looks to the extinction of a race is 
too horrible for a nation to adopt without entaihng 
upon itself the wrath of all Christendom and en- 
gendering in the citizen a disregard for human life 
and the rights of others, dangerous to society. 
I see no substitute for such a system, except in plac- 
ing all the Indians on large reservations, as rapidly 
as it can be done, and giving them absolute protec- 
tion there." 

The vexed question of civilian or military control 
had reached the bitterest stage of its discussion when 
Grant became President. For five years there had 
been general wars in which both departments seemed 
to be badly involved and for which responsibihty 
was hard to place. There were many things to be 
said in favor of either method of control. Beginning 
with the establishment of the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs in 1832, the office had been run by the War 
Department for seventeen years. In this period 
the idea of a permanent Indian Country had been 
carried out; the frontier had been established in an 
unbroken line of reserves from Texas to Green Bay; 
and the migration across the plains had begun. 
But with the creation of the Interior Department 



342 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

in 1849 the Indian Bureau had been transferred 
to civilian hands. As yet the Indian war was so 
exceptional that it was easy to see the arguments 
in favor of a peace policy. It was desired, and hon- 
estly too, though the results make this conviction 
hard to hold, to treat the Indian well, to keep the 
peace, and to elevate the savages as rapidly as they 
would permit it. However the government failed 
in practice and in controlling the men of the frontier, 
there is no doubt about the sincerity of its general 
intent. Had there been no Oregon and no California, 
no mines and no railways, and no mixture of slavery 
and politics, the hope might not have failed of realiza- 
tion. Even as it was, the civilian bureau had little 
trouble with its charges for nearly fifteen years 
after its organization. In general the military 
power was called upon when disorder passed beyond 
the control of the agent; short of that time the agent 
remained in authority. 

As a means of introducing civilization among the 
tribes the agents were more effective than army 
officers could be. They were, indeed, underpaid, ap- 
pointed for political reasons, and often too weak to 
resist the allurements of immorality or dishonesty ; 
but they were civilians. Their ideals were those of 
industry and peace. Their terms of service were 
often too short for them to learn the business, but 
they were not subject to the rapid shifting and 
transfer which made up a large part of army life. 
Army officers were better picked and trained than 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 343 

the agents, but their ambitions were military, and 
they were frequently unable to understand why 
breaches of formal discipline were not always matters 
of importance. 

The strong arguments in favor of military control 
were founded largely on the permanency of tenure in 
the army. Political appointments were fewer, the 
average of personal character and devotion was 
higher. Army administration had fewer scandals 
than had that of the Indian Bureau. The partisan 
on either side in the sixties was prone to believe 
that his favorite branch of the service was honest 
and wise, while the other was inefficient, foolish, 
and corrupt. He failed to see that in the earliest 
phase of the policy, when there was no friction, 
and consequently little fighting, the problem was 
essentially civilian; that in the next period, when 
constant friction was provoking wars, it had become 
military; and that finally, when emigration and 
transportation had changed friction into overwhelm- 
ing pressure, the wars would again cease. A large 
share of the disputes were due to the misunderstand- 
ings as to whether, in particular cases, the tribes 
should be under the bureau or the army. On the 
whole, even when the tribes were hostile, army 
control tended to increase the cost of management 
and the chance of injustice. There never was a time 
when a few thousand Indian police, with the ideals 
of police rather than those of soldiers, could not have 
done better than the army did. But the student, 



344 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

attacking the problem from afar, is as unable to solve 
it fully and justly as were its immediate custodians. 
He can at most steer in between the badly biassed 
^^ Century of Dishonor" of Mrs. Jackson, and the 
outrageous cry of the radical army and the frontier, 
that the Indian must go. 

The demand of the army for the control of the 
Indians was never gratified. Around 1870 its friends 
were insistent that since the army had to bear the 
knocks of the Indian policy, — knocks, they claimed, 
generally due to mistakes of the bureau, — it ought to 
have the whole responsibility and the whole credit. 
The inertia which attaches to federal reforms held 
this one back, while the Indian problem itself 
changed in the seventies so as to make it unneces- 
sary. Once the great wars of the sixties were done 
the tribes subsided into general peace. Their vigor- 
ous resistance was confined to the years when the 
last great wave of the white advance was surging 
over them. Then, confined to their reservations, 
they resumed the march to civilization. 

From the commencement of his term. Grant was 
willing to aid in at once reducing the abuses of the 
Indian Bureau and maintaining a peace policy on the 
plains. The Peace Commission of 1867 had done 
good work, which would have been more effective 
had cooperation between the army and the bureau 
been possible. Congress now, in April, 1869, voted 
two millions to be used in maintaining peace on the 
plains, ^^ among and with the several tribes . . . 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 345 

to promote civilization among said Indians, bring 
them, where practicable, upon reservations, relieve 
their necessities, and encourage their efforts at self- 
support." The President was authorized at the same 
time to erect a board of not more than ten men, 
'^ eminent for their intelligence and philanthropy," 
who should, with the Secretary of the Interior, 
and without salary, exercise joint control over the 
expenditures of this or any money voted for the use 
of the Indian Department. 

The Board of Indian Commissioners was designed 
to give greater wisdom to the administration of the 
Indian policy and to minimize peculation in the 
bureau. It represented, in substance, a triumph of 
the peace party over the army. '^The gentlemen 
who wrote the reports of the Commissioners revelled 
in riotous imaginations and discarded facts," sneered 
a friend of military control; but there was, more or 
less, a distinct improvement in the management of 
the reservation tribes after 1869; although, as the 
exposures of the Indian ring showed, corruption was 
by no means stopped. One way in which the Com- 
missioners and Grant sought to elevate the tone of 
agency control was through the religious, charitable, 
and missionary societies. These organizations, 
many of which had long maintained missionary 
i schools among the more civilized tribes, were in- 
vited to nominate agents, teachers, and physicians 
I for appointment by the bureau. On the whole 
, these appointments were an improvement over the 



346 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

men whom political influence had heretofore brought 
to power. Fifteen years later the Commissioner 
and the board were again complaining of the charac- 
ter of the agents ; but there was an increasing stand- 
ard of criticism. 

In its annual reports made to the Secretary of the 
Interior in 1869, and since, the board gave much 
credit to the new peace policy. In 1869 it looked 
forward with confidence ^Ho success in the effort to 
civilize the nomadic tribes.'' In 1871 it described 
^Hhe remarkable spectacle seen this fall, on the plains 
of western Nebraska and Kansas and eastern Col- 
orado, of the warlike tribes of the Sioux of Dakota, 
Montana, and Wyoming, hunting peacefully for buf- 
falo without occasioning any serious alarm among 
the thousands of white settlers whose cabins skirt 
the borders of both sides of these plains.'' In 1872, 
'Hhe advance of some of the tribes in civilization and 
Christianity has been rapid, the temper and inclina- 
tion of all of them has greatly improved. . . . They 
show a more positive intention to comply with their 
own obligations, and to accept the advice of those 
in authority over them, and are in many cases dis- 
proving the assertion, that adult Indians cannot 
be induced to work." In 1906, in its 38th Annual 
Report, there was still most marked improvement, 
^^and for the last thirty years the legislation of 
Congress concerning Indians, their education, their 
allotment and settlement on lands of their own, 
their admission to citizenship, and the protection of 




THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 347 

their rights makes, upon the whole, a chapter of 
poHtical history of which Americans may justly be 
proud.'' 

The board of Indian Commissioners believed that 
most of the obvious improvement in the Indian con- 
dition was due to the substitution of a peace policy for 
a policy of something else. It made a mistake in 
assuming that there had ever been a policy of war. 
So far as the United States government had been con- 
cerned the aim had always been peace and humanity^ 
and only when over-eager citizens had pushed into the 
Indian Country to stir up trouble had a war policy 
been administered. Even then it was distinctly 
temporary. The events of the sixties had involved 
such continuous friction and necessitated such severe 
repression that contemporaries might be pardoned 
for thinking that war was the policy rather than the 
cure. But the resistance of the tribes would gen- 
erally have ceased by 1870, even without the new 
peace policy. Every mile of western railway lessened 
the Indians' capacity for resistance by increasing 
the government's ability to repress it. The Union 
Pacific, Northern Pacific, Atlantic and Pacific, 
Texas Pacific, and Southern Pacific, to say nothing 
of a multitude of private roads like the Chicago, 
Burlington, and Quincy, the Denver and Rio 
Grande, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, and 
the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, were the real 
forces which brought peace upon the plains. Yet 
the board was right in that its influence in bringing 



348 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

closer harmony between public opinion and the Indian 
Bureau, and in improving the tone of the bureau, had 
made the transformation of the savage into the citizen 
farmer more rapid. 

Two years after the erection of the Board of Indian 
Commissioners Congress took another long step 
towards a better condition by ordering that no more 
treaties with the Indian tribes should be made by 
President and Senate. For more than two years be- 
fore 1871 no treaty had been made and ratified, and 
now the policy was definitely changed. For ninety 
years the Indians had been treated as independent 
nations. Three hundred and seventy treaties had 
been concluded with various tribes, the United States 
only once repudiating any of them. In 1863, after 
the Sioux revolt, it abrogated all treaties with the 
tribes in insurrection ; but with this exception, it had 
not applied to Indian relations the rule of international 
law that war terminates all existing treaties. The 
relation implied by the treaty had been anomalous. 
The tribes were at once independent and dependent. 
No foreign nation could treat with them; hence 
they were not free. No state could treat with them, 
and the Indian could not sue in United States courts; 
hence they were not Americans. The Supreme 
Court in the Cherokee cases had tried to define 
their unique status, but without great success. It 
was unfortunate for the Indians that the United 
States took their tribal existence seriously. The 
agreements had always a greater sanctity in ap- 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 349 

pearance than in fact. Indians honestly unable to 
comprehend the meaning of the agreement, and 
often denying that they were in any wise bound 
by it, were held to fulfilment by the power 
of the United States. The United States often 
believed that treaty violation represented deliberate 
hostility of the tribes, when it signified only the 
unintelligence of the savage and his inclination to 
follow the laws of his own existence. Attempts to en- 
force treaties thus violated led constantly to wars 
whose justification the Indian could not see. 

The act of March 3, 1871, prohibited the making 
of any Indian treaty in the future. Hereafter when 
agreements became necessary, they were to be made, 
much as they had been in the past, but Congress 
was the ratifying power and not the Senate. The 
fiction of an independence which had held the Indians 
to a standard which they could not understand was 
here abandoned; and quite as much to the point, 
perhaps, the predominance of the Senate in Indian 
affairs was superseded by control by Congress as a 
whole. In no other branch of internal administra- 
tion would the Senate have been permitted to make 
binding agreements, but here the fiction had given 
it a dominance ever since the organization of the 
government. 

In the thirty-five years following the abandonment 
of the Indian treaties the problems of management 
changed with the ascending civilization of the national 
wards. General Francis A. Walker, Indian Com- 

7f 



350 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

missioner in 1872, had seen the dawn of the ^Hhe day 
of dehverance from the fear of Indian hostihties/' 
while his successors in office saw his prophecy fulfilled. 
Five years later Carl Schurz, as Secretary of the 
Interior, gave his voice and his aid to the improvement 
of management and the drafting of a positive policy. 
His application of the merit system to Indian 
appointments, which was a startling innovation in 
national politics, worked a great change after the 
petty thievery which had flourished in the presidency 
of General Grant. Grant had indeed desired to do 
well, and conditions had appreciably bettered, 
yet his guileless trust had enabled practical politicians 
to continue their peculations in instances which 
ranged from humble agents up to the Cabinet itself. 
Schurz not only corrected much of this, but the 
first report of his Commissioner, E. A. Hayt, outlined 
the preliminaries to a well-founded civilization. Be- 
sides the continuance of concentration and education 
there were four policies which stood out in this report 
— economy in the administration of rations, that the 
Indians might not be pauperized; a special code 
of law for the Indian reserves; a well-organized 
Indian police to enforce the laws; and a division of 
reserve lands into farms which should be assigned 
to individual Indians in severalty. The administra- 
tion of Secretary Schurz gave substance to all these 
policies. 

The progress of Indian education and civilization 
began to be a real thing during Hayes's presidency. 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 351 

Most of the wars were over, permanency in residence 
could be relied on to a considerable degree, the Indians 
could better be counted, tabulated, and handled. In 
1880, the last year of Schurz in the Interior Depart- 
ment, the Indian Office reported an Indian popu- 
lation of 256,127 for the United States, excluding 
Alaska. Of these, 138,642 were described as wear- 
ing citizen's dress, while 46,330 were able to read. 
Among them had been erected both boarding and day 
schools, 72 of the former and 321 of the latter. 
^^ Reports from the reservations '^ were " full of encour- 
agement, showing an increased and more regular 
attendance of pupils and a growing interest in edu- 
cation on the part of parents. '^ Interest in the 
problem of Indian education had been aroused in 
the East as well as among the tribes during the pre- 
ceding year or two, because of the experiment with 
which the name of R. H. Pratt was closely connected. 
The non-resident boarding school, where the children 
could be taken away from the tribe and educated 
among whites, had become a factor in Carlisle, 
Hampton, and Forest Grove. Lieutenant Pratt 
had opened the first of these with 147 students in 
November, 1879. His design had been to give to 
the boys and girls the rudiments of education and 
training in farming and mechanic arts. His expe- 
rience had already, in 1880, shown this to be entirely 
practicable. The boys, uniformed and drilled as 
soldiers, under their own sergeants and corporals, 
marched to the music of their own band. Both sexes 



352 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

had exhibited at the Cumberland County Agri- 
cultural Fair, where prizes were awarded to many 
of them for quilts, shirts, pantaloons, bread, harness, 
tinware, and penmanship. Many of the students 
had increased their knowledge of white customs 
by going out in the summers to work in the fields or 
kitchens of farmers in the East. Here, too, they 
had shown the capacity for education and develop- 
ment which their bitterest frontier enemies had 
denied. In 1906 there were twenty-five of these 
schools with more than 9000 students in attendance. 
It was one thing, however, to take the brighter 
Indian children away from home and teach them 
the ways of white men, and quite another to per- 
suade the main tribe to support itself by regular 
labor. The ration system was a pauperizing in- 
fluence that removed the incentive to work. Trained 
mechanics, coming home from Carlisle, or Hampton, 
or Haskell, found no work ready for them, no custom- 
ers for their trade, and no occupation but to sit around 
with their relatives and wait for rations. Too much 
can be made of the success of Indian education, but 
the progress was real, if not rapid or great. The Mon- 
tana Crows, for instance, were, in 1904, encouraged 
into agricultural rivalry by a county fair. Their 
congenital love for gambling was converted into com- 
petition over pumpkins and live stock. In 1906 
they had not been drawing rations for nearly two 
years. While their settling down was but a single 
incident in tribal education and not a general reform, 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 353 

it indicated at least a change in emphasis in Indian 
conditions since the warlike sixties. The brilhant 
green placard which announced their county fair for 
1906 bears witness to this : — 

"CROWS, WAKE UP! 

"Your Big Fair Will Take Place Early in October. 

"Begin Planting for it Now. 

" Plant a Good Garden. 

" Put in Wheat and Oats. 

Get Your Horses, Cattle, Pigs, and Cliickens in Shape to Bring to the Fair. 

Cash Prizes and Badges will be awarded to Indians Making Best Exhibits. 

" Get Busy. Tell Your Neighbor to Go Home and Get Busy, too. 

" Committee." 

A great practical obstruction in the road of economic 
independence for the Indians was the absence of a 
legal system governing their relations, and more 
particularly securing to them individual owner- 
ship of land. Treated as independent nations by the 
United States, no attempt had been made to pass 
civil or even criminal laws for them, while the tribal 
organizations had been too primitive to do much 
of this on their own account. Individual attempts 
at progress were often checked by the fact that crime 
went unpunished in the Indian Country. An Indian 
police, embracing 815 officers and men, had existed in 
1880, but the law respecting trespassers on Indian 
lands was inadequate, and Congress was slow in 
providing codes and courts for the reservations. 
The Secretary of the Interior erected agency courts 
on his own authority in 1883; Congress extended 
certain laws over the tribes in 1885; and a little 

2a 



354 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

later provided salaries for the officials of the agency- 
courts. 

An act passed in 1887 for the ownership of lands in 
severalty by Indians marked a great step towards 
solidifying Indian civilization. There had been no 
greater obstacle to this civilization than communal 
ownership of land. The tribal standard was one of 
hunting, with agriculture as an incidental and rather 
degrading feature. Few of the tribes had any recog- 
nition of individual ownership. The educated Ind- 
ian and the savage alike were forced into economic 
stagnation by the system. Education could accom- 
plish little in face of it. The changes of the seventies 
brought a growing recognition of the evil and repeated 
requests that Congress begin the breaking down of 
the tribal system through the substitution of Ind- 
ian ownership. 

In isolated cases and by special treaty provisions 
a few of the Indians had been permitted to acquire 
lands and be blended in the body of American citi- 
zens. But no general statute existed until the passage 
of the Dawes bill in February, 1887. In this year 
the Commissioner estimated that there were 243,299 
Indians in the United States, occupying a total of 
213,117 square miles of land, nearly a section apiece. 
By the Dawes bill the President was given authority 
to divide the reserves among the Indians located on 
them, distributing the lands on the basis of a quarter 
section or 160 acres to each head of a family, an eighth 
section to single adults and orphans, and a sixteenth 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 355 

to each dependent child. It was provided also that 
when the allotments had been made, tribal owner- 
ship should cease, and the title to each farm should 
rest in the individual Indian or his heirs. But to 
forestall the improvident sale of this land the owner 
was to be denied the power to mortgage or dispose 
of it for at least twenty-five years. The United 
States was to hold it in trust for him for this time. 

Besides allowing the Indian to own his farm and 
thus take his step toward economic independence, the 
Dawes bill admitted him to citizenship. Once the 
lands had been allotted, the owners came within the 
full jurisdiction of the states or territories where 
they lived, and became amenable to and protected 
by the law as citizens of the United States. 

The policy which had been recommended since 
the time of Schurz became the accepted policy of the 
United States in 1887. ^'I fail to comprehend the 
full import of the allotment act if it was not the pur- 
pose of the Congress which passed it and the Exec- 
utive whose signature made it a law ultimately to 
dissolve all tribal relations and to place each adult 
Indian on the broad platform of American citizen- 
ship,'^ wrote the Commissioner in 1887. For the 
next twenty years the reports of the office were filled 
with details of subdivision of reserves and the adjust- 
ment of the legal problems arising from the process. 
And in the twenty-first year the old Indian Country 
ceased to exist as such, coming into the Union as the 
state of Oklahoma. 



356 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The progress of allotment under the Dawes bill 
steadily broke down the reserves of the so-called 
Indian Territory. Except the five civilized tribes, 
Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Semi- 
noles, the inhabitants who had been colonized there 
since the Civil War wanted to take advantage of the 
act. The civilized tribes preferred a different and 
more independent system for themselves, and re- 
tained their tribal identity until 1906. In the transi- 
tion it was found that granting citizenship to the 
Indian in a way increased his danger by opening him 
to the attack of the liquor dealer and depriving him 
of some of the special protection of the Indian Office. 
To meet this danger, as the period of tribal extinction 
drew near, the Burke act of 1906 modified and con- 
tinued the provisions of the Dawes bill. The new 
statute postponed citizenship until the expiration 
of the twenty-five-year period of trust, while giving 
complete jurisdiction over the allottee to the United 
States in the interim. In special cases the Secretary 
of the Interior was allowed to release from the period 
of guardianship and trusteeship individual Indians 
who were competent to manage their own affairs, but 
for the generality the period of twenty-five years 
was considered '^not too long a time for most Ind- 
ians to serve their apprenticeship in civic responsi- 
bilities. '' 

Already the opening up to legal white settlement 
had begun. In the Dawes bill it was provided that 
after the lands had been allotted in severalty the 



THE NEW INDIAN POLICY 357 

undivided surplus might be bought by the United 
States and turned into the pubHc domain for entry 
and settlement. Following this, large areas were 
purchased in 1888 and 1889, to be settled in 1890. 
The territory of Oklahoma, created in this year in 
the western end of Indian Territory, and '^No Man's 
Land," north of Texas, marked the political begin- 
ning of the end of Indian Territory. It took nearly 
twenty years to complete it, through delays in the 
process of allotment and sale; but in these two dec- 
ades the work was done thoroughly, the five civilized 
tribes divided their own lands and abandoned tribal 
government, and in November, 1908, the state of 
Oklahoma was admitted by President Roosevelt. 

The Indian relations, which were most belligerent 
in the sixties, had changed completely in the ensuing 
forty years. In part the change was due to a greater 
and more definite desire at Washington for peace, 
but chiefly it was environmental, due to the progress 
of settlement and transportation which overwhelmed 
the tribes, destroying their capacity to resist and 
embedding them firmly in the white population. 
Oklahoma marked the total abandonment of Mon- 
roe's policy of an Indian Country. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE LAST STAND OF CHIEF JOSEPH AND 
SITTING BULL 

The main defence of the last frontier by the Indians 
ceased with the termination of the Indian wars of 
the sixties. Here the resistance had most closely 
resembled a general war with the tribes in close 
alliance against the invader. With this obstacle over- 
come, the work left to be done in the conquest of the 
continent fell into two main classes: terminating 
Indian resistance by the suppression of sporadic 
outbreaks in remote byways and letting in the 
population. The new course of the Indian problem 
after 1869 led it speedily away from the part it had 
played in frontier advance until it became merely 
one of many social or race problems in the United 
States. It lost its special place as the great illustra- 
tion of the difficulties of frontier life. But although 
the new course tended toward chronic peace, there 
were frequent relapses, here and there, which pro- 
duced a series of Indian flurries after 1869. Never 
again do these episodes resemble, however remotely, 
a general Indian war. 

Human nature did not change with the adoption 
of the so-called peace policy. The government had 

358 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 359 

constantly to be on guard against the dishonest agent, 
while improved facilities in communication increased 
the squatters' ability to intrude upon valuable lands. 
The Sioux treaty of 1868, whereby the United States 
abandoned the Powder River route and erected the 
great reserve in Dakota, west of the Missouri River, 
was scarcely dry before rumors of the discovery of 
gold in the Black Hills turned the eyes of pros- 
pectors thither. 

Early in 1870 citizens of Cheyenne and the terri- 
tory of Wyoming organized a mining and prospecting 
company that professed an intention to explore the 
Big Horn country in northern Wyoming, but was 
believed by the Sioux to contemplate a visit to the 
Black Hills within their reserve. The local Sioux 
agent remonstrated against this, and General C. C. 
Augur was sent to Cheyenne to confer with the leaders 
of the expedition. He found Wyoming in a state of 
irritation against the Sioux treaty, which left the 
Indians in control of their Powder River country — 
the best third of the territory. He sympathized with 
the frontiersmen, but finally was forced by orders 
from Washington to prevent the expedition from 
starting into the field. Four years later this deferred 
reconnoissance took place as an official expedition 
under General Custer, with ^^ great excitement among 
the whole Sioux." The approach from the north- 
east of the Northern Pacific, which had reached a 
landing at Bismarck on the Missouri before the panic 
of 1873, still further increased the apprehension of 



360 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the tribes that they were to be dispossessed. The 
Indian Commissioner, in the end of 1874, beUeved 
that no harm would come of the expedition since no 
great gold finds had been made, but the Montana 
historian was nearer the truth when he wrote: 
"The whole Sioux nation was successfully defied.'' 
It was a clear violation of the tribal right, and neces- 
sarily emboldened the frontiersmen to prospect on 
their own account. 

Still further to disquiet the Sioux, and to give 
countenance to the disgruntled warrior bands that 
resented the treaties already made, came the mis- 
management of the Red Cloud agency. Professor 
0. C. Marsh, of Yale College, was stopped by Red 
Cloud, while on a geological visit to the Black Hills, 
in November, 1874, and was refused admission to the 
Indian lands until he agreed to convey to Washington 
samples of decayed flour and inferior rations which 
the Indian agent was issuing to the Oglala Sioux. 
With some time at his disposal. Professor Marsh pro- 
ceeded to study the new problem thus brought to his 
notice, and accumulated a mass of evidence which 
seemed to him to prove the existence of big plots to 
defraud the government, and mismanagement ex- 
tending even to the Secretary of the Interior. He 
published his charges in pamphlet form, and wrote 
letters of protest to the President, in which he 
maintained that the Indian officials were trying 
harder to suppress his evidence than to correct the 
grievances of the Sioux. He managed to stir up so 



I 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 361 

much interest in the East that the Board of Indian 
Commissioners finally appointed a committee to in- 
vestigate the affairs of the Red Cloud agency. The 
report of the committee in October, 1875, white- 
washed many of the individuals attacked by Professor 
Marsh, and exonerated others of guilt at the expense 
of their intelligence, but revealed abuses in the 
Indian Office which might fully justify uneasiness 
among the Sioux. 

To these tribes, already discontented because of 
their compression and sullen because of mismanage- 
ment, the entry of miners into the Black Hills country 
was the last straw. Probably a thousand miners were 
there prospecting in the summer of 1875, creating 
disturbances and exaggerating in the Indian mind 
the value of the reserve, so that an attempt by the 
Indian Bureau to negotiate a cession in the autumn 
came to nothing. The natural tendency of these 
forces was to drive the younger braves off the 
reserve, to seek comfort with the non-treaty bands 
that roamed at will and were scornful of those that 
lived in peace. Most important of the leaders 
of these bands was Sitting Bull. 

In December the Indian Commissioner, despite 
the Sioux privilege to pursue the chase, ordered all 
the Sioux to return to their reserves before February 
1, 1876, under penalty of being considered hostile. 
As yet the mutterings had not broken out in war, 
and the evidence does not show that conflict was 
inevitable. The tribes could not have got back on 



362 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

time had they wanted to ; but their failure to return 
led the Indian Office to turn the Sioux over to the 
War Department. The army began by destroying 
a friendly village on the 17th of March, a fact at- 
tested not by an enemy of the army, but by General 
H. H. Sibley, of Minnesota, who himself had fought 
the Sioux with marked success in 1862. 

With war now actually begun, three columns were 
sent into the field to arrest and restrain the hostile 
Sioux. Of the three commanders. Cook, Gibbon, 
and Custer, the last-named was the most romantic 
of fighters. He was already well known for his 
Cheyenne campaigns and his frontier book. Sher- 
man had described him in 1867 as ^^ young, very 
brave, even to rashness, a good trait for a cavalry 
officer," and as '^ ready and willing now to fight the 
Indians." La Barge, who had carried some of 
Custer's regiment on his steamer De Smet, in 
1873, saw him as '^an officer . . . clad in buckskin 
trousers from the seams of which a large fringe was 
fluttering, red-topped boots, broad sombrero, large 
gauntlets, flowing hair, and mounted on a spirited 
animal." His showy vanity and his admitted cour- 
age had already got him into more than one diffi- 
culty; now on June 25, 1876, his whole column 
of five companies, excepting only his battle horse, 
Comanche, and a half-breed scout, was destroyed in a 
battle on the Little Big Horn. If Custer had 
lived, he might perhaps have been cleared of the 
charge of disobedience, as Fetterman might ten years 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 



363 



before, but, as it turned out, there were many to 
lay his death to his own rashness. The war ended 
before 1876 was over, though Sitting Bull with a 
small band escaped to Canada, where he worried 
the Dominion Government for several years. ^^I 
know of no instance in history,- wrote Bishop 
Whipple of Minnesota, -where a great nation has so 
shamelessly violated its solemn oath.- The Sioux 
were crushed, their Black Hills were ceded, and the 
disappointed tribes settled down to another decade 
of quiescence. 

In 1877 the interest which had made Sitting Bull 
a hero in the Centennial year was transferred to 
Chief Joseph, leader of the non-treaty Nez Perces in 
the valley of the Snake. This tribe had been a 
friendly neighbor of the overland migrations since 
the expedition of Lewis and Clark. Living in the 
valleys of the Snake and its tributaries, it could 
easily have hindered the course of travel along the 
Oregon trail, but the disposition of its chiefs was 
always good. In 1855 it had begun to treat with 
the United States and had ceded considerable terri- 
tory at the conference held by Governor Stevens 
with Chief Lawyer and Chief Joseph. 

The exigencies of the Civil War, failure of Congress 
to fulfil treaty stipulations, and the discovery of 
gold along the Snake served to change the character 
of the Nez Perces. Lawyer's annuity of five hundred 
dollars, as Principal Chief, was at best not royal, 
and when its vouchers had to be cashed in green- 



364 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

backs at from forty-five to fifty cents on the dollar, 
he complained of hardship. It was difficult to per- 
suade the savage that a depreciated greenback was 
as good as money. Congress was slow with the an- 
nuities promised in 1855. In 1861, only one Indian 
in six could have a blanket, while the 4393 yards of 
calico issued allowed under two yards to each Indian. 
The Commissioner commented mildly upon this, to 
the effect that ^'Giving a blanket to one Indian works 
no satisfaction to the other five, who receive none." 
The gold boom, with the resulting rise of Lewiston, in 
the heart of the reserve, brought in so many lawless 
miners that the treaty of 1855 was soon out of date. 
In 1863 a new treaty was held with Chief Lawyer 
and fifty other headmen, by which certain valleys 
were surrendered and the bounds of the Lapwai 
reserve agreed upon. Most of the Nez Perces ac- 
cepted this, but Chief Joseph refused to sign and 
gathered about him a band of unreconciled, non- 
treaty braves who continued to hunt at will over the 
Wallowa Valley, which Lawyer and his followers had 
professed to cede. It was an interesting legal point 
as to the right of a non-treaty chief to claim to own 
lands ceded by the rest of his tribe. But Joseph, 
though discontented, was not dangerous, and there 
was little friction until settlers began to penetrate 
into his hunting-grounds. In 1873, President Grant 
created a Wallowa reserve for Joseph's Nez Perces, 
since they claimed this chiefly as their home. But 
when they showed no disposition to confine them- 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 365 

selves to its limits, he revoked the order in 1875. The 
next year a commission, headed by the Secretary of 
the Interior, Zachary Chandler, was sent to persuade 
Joseph to settle down, but returned without success. 
Joseph stood upon his right to continue to occupy 
at pleasure the lands which had always belonged 
to the Nez Perces, and which he and his followers 
had never ceded. The commission recommended 
the segregation of the medicine-men and dreamers, 
especially Smohalla, who seemed to provide the 
inspiration for Joseph, and the military occupation 
of the Wallowa Valley in anticipation of an outbreak 
by the tribe against the incoming white settlers. 
These things were done in part, but in the spring of 
1877, ^4t becoming evident to Agent Monteith that 
all negotiations for the peaceful removal of Joseph 
and his band, with other non-treaty Nez Perce 
Indians, to the Lapwai Indian reservation in Idaho 
must fail of a satisfactory adjustment, '^ the Indian 
Office gave it up, and turned the affair over to 
General O. O. Howard and the War Department. 

The conferences held by Howard with the leaders, 
in May, made it clear to them that their alternatives 
were to emigrate to Lapwai or to fight. At first 
Howard thought they would yield. Looking Glass 
and White Bird picked out a site on the Clearwater 
to which the tribe agreed to remove at once; but 
just before the day fixed for the removal, the murder 
of one of the Indians near Mt. Idaho led to revenge 
directed against the whites and the massacre of 



366 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

several. War immediately followed, for the next 
two months covering the borderland of Idaho and 
Montana with confusion. A whole volume by- 
General Howard has been devoted to its details. 
Chief Joseph himself discussed it in the North 
American Review in 1879. Dunn has treated it criti- 
cally in his Massacres of the Mountains, and the 
Montana Historical Society has published many 
articles concerning it. Considerably less is known of 
the more important wars which preceded it than of 
this struggle of the Nez Perces. In August the fight- 
ing turned to flight, Chief Joseph abandoning the 
Salmon River country and crossing into the Yellow- 
stone Valley. In seventy-five days Howard chased 
him 1321 miles, across the Yellowstone Park toward 
the Big Horn country and the Sioux reserve. Along 
the swift flight there were running battles from time 
to time, while the fugitives replenished their stores 
and stock from the country through which they 
passed. Behind them Howard pressed; in their front 
Colonel Nelson A. Miles was ordered to head them 
off. Miles caught their trail in the end of Septem- 
ber after they had crossed the Missouri River and 
had headed for the refuge in Canada which Sitting 
Bull had found. On October 3, 1877, he surprised 
the Nez Perce camp on Snake Creek, capturing six 
hundred head of stock and inflicting upon Joseph's 
band the heaviest blow of the war. Two days later 
the stubborn chief surrendered to Colonel Miles. 
''What shall be done with them?" Commis- 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 367 

sioner Hayt asked at the end of 1877. For once an 
Indian band had conducted a war on white principles, 
obeying the rules of war and refraining from mutila- 
tion and torture. Joseph had by his sheer military 
skill won the admiration and respect of his military 
opponents. But the murders which had inaugurated 
the war prevented a return of the tribe to Idaho. 
To exile they were sent, and Joseph's uprising ended 
as all such resistances must. The forcible invasion 
of the territory by the whites was maintained; the 
tribe was sent in punishment to malarial lands in 
Indian Territory, where they rapidly dwindled in 
number. There has been no adequate defence of the 
policy of the United States from first to last. 

The Modoc of northern California, and the 
Apache of Arizona and New Mexico fought against 
the inevitable, as did the Sioux and the Nez Perces. 
The former broke out in resistance in the winter of 
1872-1873, after they had long been proscribed by 
California opinion. In March of 1873 they made 
their fate sure by the treacherous murder of General 
E. R. S. Canby and other peace commissioners sent 
to confer with them. In the war which resulted the 
Modoc, under Modoc Jack and Scar-Faced Charley, 
were pursued from cave to ravine among the lava 
beds of the Modoc country until regular soldiers 
finally corralled them all. Jack was hanged for 
murder at Fort Klamath in October, but Charley 
lived to settle down and reform with a portion of the 
tribe in Indian Territory. 



368 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

The Apache had always been a thorn in the 
flesh of the trifling population of Arizona and New 
Mexico, and a nuisance to both army and Indian 
Office. The Navaho, their neighbors, after a hard 
decade with Carleton and the Bosque Redondo, had 
quieted down during the seventies and advanced 
towards economic independence. But the Apache 
were long in learning the virtues of non-resistance. 
Bell had found in Arizona a young girl whose adven- 
tures as a fifteen-year-old child served to explain the 
attitude of the whites. She had been carried off by 
Indians who, when pressed by pursuers, had stripped 
her naked, knocked her senseless with a tomahawk, 
pierced her arms with three arrows and a leg with 
one, and then rolled her down a ravine, there to aban- 
don her. The child had come to, and without food, 
clothes, or water, had found her way home over 
thirty miles of mountain paths. Such episodes neces- 
sarily inspired the white population with fear and 
hatred, while the continued residence of the sufferers 
in the Indians' vicinity illustrates the persistence of 
the pressure which was sure to overwhelm the tribes 
in the end. Tucson had retaliated against such 
excesses of the red men by equal excesses of the 
whites. Without any immediate provocation, four- 
score Arivapa Apache, who had been concentrated 
under military supervision at Camp Grant, were 
massacred in cold blood. 

General George Crook alone was able to bring 
order into the Arizona frontier. From 1871 to 1875 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 369 

he was there in command, — 'Hhe beau-ideal Indian 
fighter," Dunn calls him. For two years he en- 
gaged in constant campaigns against the ''incorri- 
gibly hostile," but before 1873 was over he had most 
of his Apache pacified, checked off, and under police 
supervision. He enrolled them and gave to each a 
brass identification check, so that it might be easier 
for his police to watch them. The tribes were passed 
back to the Indian Office in 1874, and Crook was 
transferred to another command in 1875. Immedi- 
ately the Indian Commissioner commenced to con- 
centrate the scattered tribes, but was hindered by 
hostilities among the Indians themselves quite as 
bitter as their hatred for the whites. First Victorio, 
and then Geronimo was the centre of the resistance 
to the concentration which placed hereditary enemies 
side by side. They protested against the sites as- 
signed them, and successfully defied the Commis- 
sioner to carry out his orders. Crook was brought 
back to the department in 1882, and after another 
long war gradually established peace. 

Sitting Bull, who had fled to Canada in 1876, 
returned to Dakota in the early eighties in time to 
witness the rapid settlement of the northern plains 
and the growth of the territories towards statehood. 
After his revolt the Black Hills had been taken away 
from the tribe, as had been the vague hunting rights 
over northern Wyoming. Now as statehood ad- 
vanced in the later eighties, and as population piled 
up around the edges of the reserve, the time was 



370 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

ripe for the medicine-men to preach the coming 
of a Messiah, and for Sitting Bull to increase his 
personal following. Bad crops which in these years 
produced populism in Kansas and Nebraska, had even 
greater menace for the half -civilized Indians. Agents 
and army officers became aware of the undercurrent 
of danger some months before trouble broke out. 
The state of South Dakota was admitted in Novem- 
ber, 1889. Just a year later the Bureau turned the 
Sioux country over to the army, and General Nelson 
A. Miles proceeded to restore peace, especially in 
the vicinity of the Rosebud and Pine Ridge agencies. 
The arrest of Sitting Bull, who claimed miraculous 
powers for himself, and whose ''ghost shirts" were 
supposed to give invulnerability to his followers, 
was attempted in December. The troops sent out 
were resisted, however, and in the melee the prophet 
was killed. The war which followed was much 
noticed, but of little consequence. General Miles 
had plenty of troops and Hotchkiss guns. Helio- 
graph stations conveyed news easily and safely. 
But when orders were issued two weeks after the 
death of Sitting Bull to disarm the camp at Wounded 
Knee, the savages resisted. The troops within 
reach, far outnumbered, blazed away with their 
rapid-fire guns, regardless of age or sex, with such 
effect that more than two hundred Indian bodies, 
mostly women and children, were found dead upon 
the field. 
With the death of Sitting Bull, turbulence among 



CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL 371 

the Indians, important enough to be called resistance, 
came to an end. There had been many other iso- 
lated cases of outbreak since the adoption of the 
peace policy in 1869. There were petty riots and 
individual murders long after 1890. But there were, 
and could be, no more Indian wars. Many of the 
tribes had been educated to half-civilization, while 
lands in severalty had changed the point of view of 
many tribesmen. The relative strength of the two 
races was overwhelmingly in favor of the whites. 



CHAPTER XXII 

LETTING IN THE POPULATION* 

" Veil them, cover them, wall them round — 
Blossom, and creeper, and weed — 
Let us forget the sight and the sound, 
The smell and the touch of the breed ! " 

Thus Kipling wrote of ^'Letting in the Jungle," 
upon the Indian village. The forces of nature were 
turned loose upon it. The gentle deer nibbled at the 
growing crops, the elephant trampled them down, and 
the wild pig rooted them up. The mud walls of the 
thatched huts dissolved in the torrents, and '^by the 
end of the Rains there was roaring Jungle in full blast 
on the spot that had been under plough not six months 
before. " The white man worked the opposite of this 
on what remained of the American desert in the last 
fifteen years of the history of the old frontier. In a 
decade and a half a greater change came over it than 
the previous fifty years had seen, and before 1890, 
it is fair to say that the frontier was no more. 

The American frontier, the irregular, imaginary 
line separating the farm lands and the unused West, 

* This chapter follows, in part, F. L. Paxson, '' The Pacific Rail- 
roads and the Disappearance of the Frontier in America," in Ann, 
Rep. of the Am. Hist. Assn., 1907, Vol. I, pp. 105-118. 

372 



LETTING IN THE POPULATION 373 

had become nearly a circle before the compromise 
of 1850. In the form of a wedge with receding flanks 
it had come down the Ohio and up the Missouri in the 
last generation. The flanks had widened out in the 
thirties as Arkansas, and Missouri, and Iowa had 
received their population. In the next ten years 
Texas and the Pacific settlements had carried the 
line further west until the circular shape of the 
frontier was clearly apparent by the middle of the 
century. And thus it stood, with changes only in 
detail, for a generation more. In whatever sense 
the word "frontier " is used, the fact is the same. If 
it be taken as the dividing hne, as the area enclosed, 
or as the domain of the trapper and the rancher, the 
frontier of 1880 was in most of its aspects the frontier 
of 1850. 

The pressure on the frontier line had increased 
steadily during these thirty years. Population 
moved easily and rapidly after the Civil War. The 
agricultural states abutting on the line had grown in 
size and wealth, with a recognition of the barrier that 
became clearer as more citizens settled along it. 
East and south, it was close to the rainfall line which 
divides easy farming country from the semi-arid 
plains; west, it was a mountain range. In either 
case the country enclosed was too refractory to yield 
to the piecemeal process which had conquered the 
wilderness along other frontiers, while its check to 
expansion and hindrance to communication became 
of increasing consequence as population grew. 



374 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Yet the barrier held. By 1850 the agricultural 
frontier was pressing against it. By 1860 the rail- 
way frontier had reached it. The former could not 
cross it because of the slight temptation to agricul- 
ture offered by the lands beyond; the latter was 
restrained by the prohibitive cost of building rail- 
ways through an entirely unsettled district. Private 
initiative had done all it could in reclaiming the con- 
tinent; the one remaining task called for direct na- 
tional aid. 

The influences operating upon this frontier of the 
Far West, though not making it less of a barrier, made 
it better known than any of the earlier frontiers. In 
the first place, the trails crossed it, with the result 
that its geography became well known throughout 
the country. No other frontier had been the site 
of a thoroughfare for many years before its actual 
settlement. Again, the mining discoveries of the 
later fifties and sixties increased general knowledge 
of the West, and scattered groups of inhabitants here 
and there, without populating it in any sense. Finally 
the Indian friction produced the series of Indian 
wars which again called the wild West to the centre 
of the stage for many years. 

All of these forces served to advertise the existence 
of this frontier and its barrier character. They 
had cooperated to enlarge the railway movement, 
as it respected the Pacific roads, until the Union 
Pacific was authorized to meet the new demand; 
and while the Union Pacific was under construction. 



LETTING IN THE POPULATION 375 

other roads to meet the same demands were chartered 
and promoted. These roads bridged and then dis- 
pelled the final barrier. 

Congress provided the legal equipment for the anni- 
hilation of the entire frontier between 1862 and 1871. 
The charter acts of the Northern Pacific, the Atlan- 
tic and Pacific, the Texas Pacific, and the Southern 
Pacific at once opened the way for some five new 
continental lines and closed the period of direct fed- 
eral aid to railway construction. The Northern Pa- 
cific received its charter on the same day that the 
Union Pacific was given its double subsidy in 1864. 
It was authorized to join the waters of Lake Superior 
and Puget Sound, and was to receive a land grant of 
twenty sections per mile in the states and forty in 
the territories through which it should run. In the 
summer of 1866 a third continental route was pro- 
vided for in the South along the line of the thirty- 
fifth parallel survey. This, the Atlantic and Pacific, 
was to build from Springfield, Missouri, by way of Al- 
buquerque, New Mexico, to the Pacific, and to connect, 
near the eastern line of California, with the South- 
ern Pacific, of California. It likewise was promised 
twenty sections of land in the states and forty in the 
territories. The Texas Pacific was chartered March 
3, 1871, as the last of the land grant railways. It 
received the usual grant, which was applicable only 
west of Texas; within that state, between Texarkana 
and El Paso, it could receive no federal aid since in 
Texas there were no public lands. Its charter called 



376 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

for construction to San Diego, but the Southern 
Pacific, building across Arizona and New Mexico, 
headed it off at El Paso, and it got no farther. 

To these deliberate acts in aid of the Pacific rail- 
ways. Congress added others in the form of local 
or state grants in the same years, so that by 1871 all 
that the companies could ask for the future was 
lenient interpretation of their contracts. For the 
first time the federal government had taken an ac- 
tive initiative in providing for the destruction of a 
frontier. Its resolution, in 1871, to treat no longer 
with the Indian tribes as independent nations is evi- 
dence of a realization of the approaching frontier 
change. 

, The new Pacific railways began to build just as the 
Union Pacific was completed and opened to traffic. 
In the cases of all, the development was slow, since 
the investing public had little confidence in the ex- 
istence of a business large enough to maintain four 
systems, or in the fertility of the semi-arid desert. 
The first period of construction of all these roads ter- 
minated in 1873, when panic brought transportation 
projects to an end, and forbade revival for a period of 
five years. 

Jay Cooke, whose Philadelphia house had done 
much to establish public credit during the war and 
had created a market of small buyers for invest- 
ment securities on the strength of United States 
bonds, popularized the Northern Pacific in 1869 
and 1870. Within two years he is said to have 



LETTING IN THE POPULATION 377 

raised thirty millions for the construction of the road, 
making its building a financial possibility. And 
although he may have distorted the isotherm several 
degrees in order to picture his farm lands as semi- 
tropical in their luxuriance, as General Hazen charged, 
he established Duluth and Tacoma, gave St. Paul 
her opportunity, and had run the main line of track 
through Fargo, on the Red, to Bismarck, on the 
Missouri, more than three hundred and fifty miles 
from Lake Superior, before his failure in 1873 brought 
expansion to an end. 

For the Northwest, the construction of the North- 
ern Pacific was of fundamental importance. The 
railway frontier of 1869 left Minnesota, Dakota, and 
much of Wisconsin beyond its reach. The potential 
grain fields of the Red River region were virgin forest, 
and on the main line of the new road, for two thou- 
sand miles, hardly a trace of settled habitation ex- 
isted. The panic of 1873 caught the Union Pacific 
at Bismarck, with nearly three hundred miles of un- 
profitable track extending in advance of the railroad 
frontier. The Atlantic and Pacific and Texas Pacific 
were less seriously overbuilt, but not less effectively 
checked. The former, starting from Springfield, had 
constructed across southwestern Missouri to Vinita, 
in Indian Territory, where it arrived in the fall of 
1871. It had meanwhile acquired some of the old 
Missouri state-aided roads, so as to get track into 
St. Louis. The panic forced it to default, Vinita re- 
1 remained its terminus for several years, and when it 



378 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

emerged from the receiver's hands, it bore the new 
name of St. Louis and San Francisco. 

The Texas Pacific represented a consoHdation of 
local lines which expected, through federal incorpo- 
ration, to reach the dignity of a continental railroad. 
It began its construction towards El Paso from 
Shreveport, Louisiana, and Texarkana, on the state 
line, and reached the vicinity of Dallas and Fort 
Worth before the panic. It planned to get into St. 
Louis over the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and 
Southern, and into New Orleans over the New 
Orleans Pacific. The borderland of Texas, Arkan- 
sas, and Missouri became through these lines a 
centre of railway development, while in the near-by 
grazing country the meat-packing industries shortly 
found their sources of supply. 

The panic which the failure of Jay Cooke precipi- 
tated in 1873 could scarcely have been deferred for 
many years. The waste of the Civil War period, and 
the enthusiasm for economic development which 
followed it, invited the retribution that usually 
follows continued and widespread inflation. Already 
the completion of a national railway system was 
foreshadowed. Heretofore the western demand had 
been for railways at any cost, but the Granger 
activities following the panic gave warning of an 
approaching period when this should be changed 
into a demand for regulation of railroads. But 
as yet the frontier remained substantially intact, 
and until its railway system should be completed the 



LETTING IN THE POPULATION 379 

Granger demand could not be translated into an 
effective movement for federal control. It was not 
until 1879 that the United States recovered from the 
depression following the crisis. In that year resump- 
tion marked the readjustment of national currency, 
reconstruction was over, and the railways entered 
upon the last five years of the culminating period in 
the history of the frontier. When the five years were 
over, five new continental routes were available 
for transportation. 

The Texas and Pacific had hardly started its prog- 
ress across Texas when checked by the panic in the 
vicinity of Fort Worth. When it revived, it pushed 
its track towards Sierra Blanca and El Paso, aided by 
a land grant from the state. Beyond Texas it never 
built. Corporations of California, Arizona, and 
New Mexico, all bearing the name of Southern Pa- 
cific, constructed the line across the Colorado River 
and along the Gila, through lands acquired by the 
Gadsden Purchase of 1853. Trains were running over 
its tracks to St. Louis by January, 1882, and to New 
Orleans by the following October. In the course of 
this Southern Pacific construction, connection had 
been made with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe 
at Deming, New Mexico, in March, 1881, but through 
lack of harmony between the roads their junction 
was of little consequence. 

The owners of the Southern Pacific opened an 
additional line through southern Texas in the begin- 
ning of 1883. Around the Galveston, Harrisburg, 



380 



THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 




LETTING IN THE POPULATION 381 

and San Antonio, of Texas, they had grouped other 
lines and begun double construction from San 
Antonio west, and from El Paso, or more accurately 
Sierra Blanca, east. Between El Paso and Sierra 
Blanca, a distance of about ninety miles, this new 
line and the Texas and Pacific used the same track. 
In later years the line through San Antonio and 
Houston became the main line of the Southern 
Pacific. 

A third connection of the Southern Pacific across 
Texas was operated before the end of 1883 over its 
Mojave extension in California and the Atlantic and 
Pacific from the Needles to Albuquerque. The old At- 
lantic and Pacific had built to Vinita, gone into receiv- 
ership, and come out as St. Louis and San Francisco. 
But its land grant had remained unused, while the 
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe had reached Albu- 
querque and had exhausted its own land grant, 
received through the state of Kansas and ceasing 
at the Colorado line. Entering Colorado, the latter 
had passed by Las Animas and thrown a branch 
along the old Santa Fe trail to Santa Fe and Albu- 
querque. Here it came to an agreement with the St. 
Louis and San Francisco, by which the two roads were 
to build jointly under the Atlantic and Pacific fran- 
chise, from Albuquerque into California. They 
built rapidly; but the Southern Pacific, not relishing 
a rival in its state, had made use of its charter privi- 
lege to meet the new road on the eastern boundary 
of California. Hence its Mojave branch was waiting 



382 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

at the Needles when the Atlantic and Pacific arrived 
there; and the latter built no farther. Upon the 
completion of bridges over the Colorado and Rio 
Grande this third eastern connection of the Southern 
Pacific was completed so that Pullman cars were 
running through into St. Louis on October 21, 1883. 
The names of Billings and Villard are most closely 
connected with the renascence of the Northern 
Pacific. The panic had stopped this line at the 
Missouri River, although it had built a few miles 
in Washington territory, around its new terminal 
city of Tacoma. The illumination of crisis times 
had served to discredit the route as effectively as Jay 
Cooke had served to boom it with advertisements in 
his palmy days. The existence of various land grant 
railways in Washington and Oregon made the revival 
difficult to finance since its various rivals could offer 
competition by both water and rail along the Colum- 
bia River, below Walla Walla. Under the presidency 
of Frederick Billings construction revived about 
1879, from Mandan, opposite Bismarck on the Mis- 
souri, and from Wallula, at the junction of the 
Columbia and Snake. From these points lines 
were pushed over the Pend d' Oreille and Missouri 
divisions towards the continental divide. Belowi 
Wallula, the Columbia Valley traffic was shared by* 
agreement with the Oregon Railway and Navigation 
Company, which, under the presidency of Henry 
Villard, owned the steamship and railway lines of 
Oregon. As the time for opening the through lines 



LETTING IN THE POPULATION 383 

approached, the question of Columbia River com- 
petition increased in serious aspect. Villard solved 
the problem through the agency of his famous 
blmd pool, which still stands remarkable in rail- 
way finance. With the proceeds of the pool he 
organized the Oregon and Transcontinental as a 
holding company, and purchased a controlling in- 
terest in the rival roads. With harmony of plan 
thus insured, he assumed the presidency of the 
Northern Pacific in 1881, in time to complete and 
celebrate the opening of its main line in 1883. His 
celebration was elaborate, yet the Nation remarked 
that the ''mere achievement of laying a continuous 
rail across the continent has long since been taken 
out of the realm of marvels, and the country can 
never feel again the thrill which the joining of the 
Central and Union Pacific lines gave it.'' 

The land grant railways completed these four 
eastern connections across the frontier in the period 
of culmination. Private capital added a fifth in the 
new route through Denver and Ogden, controlled 
by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy and the 
Denver and Rio Grande. The Burhngton, built 
along the old Republican River trail to Denver, had 
competed with the Union Pacific for the traflSc of 
that point since June, 1882. West of Denver the 
narrow gauge of the Denver and Rio Grande had 
been advancing since 1870. 

General WilHam J. Palmer and a group of Phila^ 
delphia capitaHsts had, in 1870, secured a Colorado 



384 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

charter for their Denver and Rio Grande. Started 
in 1871, it had reached the new settlement at 
Colorado Springs that autumn, and had continued 
south in later years. Like other roads it had pro- 
gressed slowly in the panic years. In 1876 it had 
been met at Pueblo by the Atchison, Topeka, and 
Santa Fe. From Pueblo it contested successfully 
with this rival for the grand canon of the Arkansas, 
and built up that valley through the Gunnison 
country and across the old Ute reserve, to Grand 
Junction. From the Utah line it had been con- 
tinued to Ogden by an allied corporation. A 
through service to Ogden, inaugurated in the summer 
of 1883, brought competition to the Union Pacific 
throughout its whole extent. 

The continental frontier, whose isolation the Union 
Pacific had threatened in 1869, was easily accessible 
by 1884. Along six different lines between New 
Orleans and St. Paul it had been made possible to 
cross the sometime American desert to the Pacific 
states. No longer could any portion of the republic 
be considered as beyond the reach of civilization. 
Instead of a waste that forbade national unity in its 
presence, a thousand plains stations beckoned for 
colonists, and through lines of railway iron bound 
the nation into an economic and political unit. ^'As 
the railroads overtook the successive lines of isolated 
frontier posts, and settlements spread out over 
country no longer requiring military protection," 
wrote General P. H. Sheridan in 1882, ''the army 



LETTING IN THE POPULATION 385 

vacated its temporary shelters and marched on into 
remote regions beyond, there to repeat and con- 
tinue its pioneer work. In rear of the advancing Hne 
of troops the primitive ' dug-outs ' and cabins of the 
frontiersmen, were steadily replaced by the taste- 
ful houses, thrifty farms, neat villages, and busy 
towns of a people who knew how best to employ the 
vast resources of the great West. The civilization 
from the Atlantic is now reaching out toward that 
rapidly approaching it from the direction of the 
Pacific, the long intervening strip of territory, ex- 
tending from the British possessions to Old Mexico, 
yearly growing narrower; finally the dividing lines 
will entirely disappear and the mingling settlements 
absorb the remnants of the once powerful Indian 
nations who, fifteen years ago, vainly attempted to 
forbid the destined progress of the age." The 
deluge of population realized by Sheridan, and let in 
by the railways, had, by 1890, blotted the uninhabited 
frontier off the map. Local spots yet remained un- 
peopled, but the census of 1890 revealed no clear 
division between the unsettled West and the rest of 
the United States. 

New states in plains and mountains marked the 
abolition of the last frontier as they had the earlier. 
In less than ten years the gap between Minnesota 
and Oregon was filled in: North Dakota and 
South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and 
Washington. In 1890, for the first time, a solid band 
of states connected the Atlantic and Pacific. Farther 

2c 



386 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

south, the Indian Country succumbed to the new 
pressure. The Dawes bill released a fertile acreage 
to be distributed to the land hungry who had banked 
up around the borders of Kansas, Arkansas, and 
Texas. Oklahoma, as a territory, appeared in 1890, 
while in eighteen more years, swallowing up the 
whole Indian Country, it had taken its place as a 
member of the Union. Between the northern tier 
of states and Oklahoma, the middle West had grown 
as well. Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, the 
last creating eleven new counties in its eastern 
third in 1889, had seen their population densify under 
the stimulus of easy transportation. Much of the 
settlement had been premature, inviting failure, 
as populism later showed, but it left no area in the 
United States unreclaimed, inaccessible, and large 
enough to be regarded as a national frontier. Thej 
last frontier, the same that Long had described as] 
the American Desert in 1820, had been won. 



NOTE ON THE SOURCES 

The fundamental ideas upon which all recent careful work in 
western history has been based were first stated by Frederick J. 
Turner, in his paper on The Significance of the Frontier in Ameri- 
can History, in the Annual Report of the Am. Hist. Assn., 1893. 
No comprehensive history of the trans-Mississippi West has yet 
appeared ; Randall Parrish, The Great Plains (2d ed., Chicago, 
1907), is at best only a brief and superficial sketch; the histories 
of the several far western states by Hubert Howe Bancroft remain 
the most useful collection of secondary materials upon the 
subject. R. G. Thwaites, Rocky Mountain Exploration (N.Y., 
1904) ; O. P. Austin, Steps in the Expansion of our Territory 
(N.Y., 1903) ; H. Gannett, Boundaries of the United States and 
of the Several States and Territories {Bulletin of the U.S. Geological 
Survey, No. 226, 1904) ; and Organic Acts for the Territories of the 
United States with Notes thereon (56th Cong., 1st sess.. Sen. Doc. 
148), are also of use. 

The local history of the West must yet be collected from many 
varieties of sources. The state historical societies have been 
active for many years, their more important collections com- 
prising : Publications of the Arkansas Hist. Assn., Annals of Iowa, 
Iowa Hist. Record, Iowa Journal of Hist, and Politics, Collec- 
tions of the Minnesota Hist. Soc, Trans, of the Kansas State Hist. 
Soc, Trans, and Rep. of the Nebraska Hist. Soc, Proceedings of 
the Missouri Hist. Soc, Contrib. to the Hist. Soc. of Montana, 
Quart, of the Oregon Hist. Soc, Quart, of the Texas State Hist. 
Assn., Collections of the Wisconsin State Hist. Soc. The scattered 
but valuable fragments to be found in these files are to be supple- 
mented by the narratives contained in the histories of the 
single states or sections, the more important of these being: 

387 



388 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

T. H. Hittell, California; F. Hall, Colorado; J. C. Smiley, Denver 
(an unusually accurate and full piece of local history) ; W. Upham, 
Minnesota in Three Centuries; G. P. Garrison, Texas; E.H.Meany, 
Washington; J. Schafer, Hist, of the Pacific Northwest; R. G. 
Thwaites, Wisconsin, and the Works of H. H. Bancroft. 

The comprehensive collection of geographic data for the West 
is the Reports of Explorations and Surveys for a Railroad from the 
Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, made by the War Depart- 
ment and published by Congress in twelve huge volumes, 1855 -. 
The most important official predecessors of this survey left the 
following reports : E. James, Account of an Expedition from 
Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains, performed in the Years 1819, 
1820, . . . under the Command of Maj. S. H. Long (Phila., 
1823) ; J. C. Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expeditions to the 
Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North 
California in the Years 1843-44 (28th Cong., 2d sess.. Sen. Doc. 
174) ; W. H. Emory, Notes of a Military Reconnoissance from Ft. 
Leavenworth . . . to San Diego . . . (30th Cong., 1st sess., Ex. 
Doc. 41) ; H. Stansbury, Exploration and Survey of the Valley of 
the Great Salt Lake of Utah . . . (32d Cong., 1st sess.. Sen. Ex. 
Doc. 3). From the great number of personal narratives of 
western trips, those of James 0. Pattie, John B. Wyeth, John K. 
Townsend, and Joel Palmer may be selected as typical and 
useful. All of these, as well as the James narrative of the Long 
expedition, are reprinted in the monumental R. G. Thwaites, 
Early Western Travels, which does not, however, give any aid for 
the period after 1850. Later travels of importance are J. I. 
Thornton, Oregon and California in I848 . . . (N.Y., 1849); 
Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San 
Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (N.Y., 1860); R. F. Burton, 
The City of the Saints, and across the Rocky Mountains to Califor- 
nia (N.Y., 1862) ; R. B. Marcy, The Prairie Traveller, a Hand- 
hook for Overland Expeditions (edited by R. F. Burton, London, 
1863) ; F. C. Young, Across the Plains in '65 (Denver, 1905) ; 
Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent (Springfield, 1861) ; Samuel 



NOTE ON THE SOURCES 389 

Bowles, Our New West, Records of Travels between the Mississippi 
River and the Pacific Ocean (Hartford, 1869) ; W. A. Bell, New 
Tracks in North America (2d ed., London, 1870) ; J. H. Beadle, 
The Undeveloped West, or Five Years in the Territories (Phila., 
1873). 

The classic account of traffic on the plains is Josiah Gregg, 
Commerce of the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa Fe Trader 
(many editions, and reprinted in Thwaites) ; H. M. Chittenden, 
History of Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River (N.Y., 
1903), and The American Fur Trade of the Far West (N.Y , 
1902), are the best modern accounts. A brilliant sketch is C. F. 
Lummis, Pioneer Transportation in America, Its Curiosities and 
Romance {McClure's Magazine, 1905). Other works of use are 
Henry Inman, The Old Santa Fe Trail (N.Y., 1898); Henry 
Inman and William F. Cody, The Great Salt Lake Trail (N.Y., 
1898) ; F. A. Root and W. E. Connelley, The Overland Stage to 
California (Topeka, 1901); F. G. Young, The Oregon Trail, in 
Oregon Hist. Soc. Quarterly, Vol. I; F. Parkman, The Oregon 
Trail. 

Railway transportation in the Far West yet awaits its historian. 
Some useful antiquarian data are to be found in C. F. Carter, 
When Railroads were New (N.Y., 1909), and there are a few 
histories of single roads, the most valuable being J. P. Davis, 
The Union Pacific Railway (Chicago, 1894), and E. V. Smalley, 
History of the Northern Pacific Railroad (N.Y., 1883). L. H. 
Haney, A Congressional History of Railways in the United States 
to 1850; J. B. Sanborn, Congressional Grants of Lands in Aid of 
Railways, and B. H. Meyer, The Northern Securities Case, all in 
the Bulletins of the University of Wisconsin, contain much in- 
formation and useful bibliographies. The local historical socie- 
ties have published many brief articles on single lines. There 
is a bibliography of the continental railways in F. L. Paxson, 
The Pacific Railroads and the Disappearance of the Frontier in 
America, in Ann. Rep. of the Am. Hist. Assn., 1907. Their social 
and political aspects may be traced in J. B. Crawford, The 



390 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

Credit Mohilier of America (Boston, 1880) and E. W. Martin, 
History of the Granger Movement (1874). The sources, which 
are as yet uncollected, are largely in the government documents 
and the files of the economic and railroad periodicals. 

For half a century, during which the Indian problem reached 
and passed its most difficult places, the United States was negli- 
gent in publishing compilations of Indian laws and treaties. 
In 1837 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs published in Washing- 
ton, Treaties between the United States of America and the Several 
Indian Tribes, from 1778 to 1837 : with a copious Table of Con- 
tents. After this date, documents and correspondence were to 
be found only in the intricate sessional papers and the Annual 
Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which accom- 
panied the reports of the Secretary of War, 1832-1849, and those 
of the Secretary of the Interior after 1849. In 1902 Congress 
published C. J. Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws, and Treaties 
(57th Cong., 1st sess.. Sen. Doc. 452). Few historians have made 
serious use of these compilations or reports. Two other govern- 
ment documents of great value in the history of Indian negotia- 
tions are, Thomas Donaldson, The Public Domain (47th Cong., 2d 
sess., H. Misc. Doc. 45, Pt. 4), and C. C. Royce, Indian Land 
Cessions in the United States (with many charts, in 18th Ann. 
Rep. of the Bureau of Am. Ethnology, Pt. 2, 1896-1897). Most 
special works on the Indians are partisan, spectacular, or ill 
informed ; occasionally they have all these qualities. A few of 
the most accessible are : A. H. Abel, History of the Events 
resulting in Indian Consolidation West of the Mississippi (in Ann. 
Rep. of the Am. Hist. Assn., 1906, an elaborate and scholarly 
work) ; J. P. Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains, a History of the 
Indian Wars of the Far West (N.Y., 1886; a relatively critical 
work, with some bibliography) ; R. I. Dodge, Our Wild Indians . . . 
(Hartford, 1883) ; G. E. Edwards, The Red Man and the White 
Man in North America from its Discovery to the Present Time 
(Boston, 1882; a series of Lowell Institute lectures, by no means 
so valuable as the pretentious title would indicate); I. V. D. 



NOTE ON THE SOURCES 391 

Heard, History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863 
(N.Y., 1863 ; a contemporary and useful narrative) ; 0. 0. Howard, 
Nez Perce Joseph, an Account of his Ancestors, his Lands, his 
Confederates, his Enemies, his Murders, his War, his Pursuit and 
Capture (Boston, 1881; this is General Howard's personal vindi- 
cation) ; Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor, a 
Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings with Some of 
the Indian Tribes (N.Y., 1881 ; highly colored and partisan) ; 
G. W. Manypenny, Our Indian Wards (Cincinnati, 1880; by a 
former Indian Commissioner) ; L. E. Textor, Official Relations 
between the United States and the Sioux Indians (Palo Alto, 1896; 
one of the few scholarly and dispassionate works on the Indians) ; 
F. A. Walker, The Indian Question (Boston, 1874; three essays by 
a former Indian Commissioner) ; C. T. Brady, Indian Fights and 
Fighters and Northwestern Fights and Fighters (N.Y., 1907; two 
volumes in his series of American Fights and Fighters, prepared 
for consumers of popular sensational literature, but containing 
much valuable detail, and some critical judgments). 

Nearly every incident in the history of Indian relations has 
been made the subject of investigations by the War and Interior 
departments. The resulting collections of papers are to be found 
in the congressional documents, through the indexes. They are 
too numerous to be listed here. The searcher should look for re- 
ports from the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, 
or the Postmaster-general, for court-martial proceedings, and 
for reports of special committees of Congress. Dunn gives some 
classified lists in his Massacres of the Mountains. 

There is a rapidly increasing mass of individual biography and 
reminiscence for the West during this period. Some works of 
this class which have been found useful here are : W. M. Meigs, 
Thomas Hart Benton (Phila., 1904) ; C. W. Upham, Life, Explora- 
tions, and Public Services of John Charles Fremont (40th thousand, 
Boston, 1856) ; S. B. Harding, Life of George B. Smith, Founder of 
Sedalia, Missouri (Sedalia, 1907) ; P. H. Burnett, Recollections and 
Opinions of an Old Pioneer (N.Y., 1880; by one who had followed 



392 THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER 

the Oregon trail and had later become governor of California) ; 
A. Johnson, S. A. Douglas (N.Y., 1908; one of the most signifi- 
cant biographies of recent years); H. Stevens, Life of Isaac 
Ingalls Stevens (Boston, 1900) ; R. S. Thorndike, The Sherman 
Letters (N.Y., 1894; full of references to frontier conditions in the 
sixties); P. H. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs (London, 1888; with 
a good map of the Indian war of 1867-1868, which the later 
edition has dropped) ; E. P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke, Financier 
of the Civil War (Phila., 1907; with details of Northern Pacific 
railway finance) ; H. Villard, Memoirs (Boston, 1904; the fife of 
an active railway financier) ; Alexander Majors, Seventy Years on 
the Frontier (N.Y., 1893; the reminiscences of one who had be- 
longed to the great firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell) ; G. R. 
Brown, Reminiscences of William M. Stewart of Nevada (1908). 

Miscellaneous works indicating various types of materials 
which have been drawn upon are : O. J. Hollister, The Mines of 
Colorado (Springfield, 1867; a miners' handbook); S. Mowry, 
Arizona and Sonora (3d ed., 1864; written in the spirit of a mining 
prospectus) ; T. B. H. Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints 
(London, 1874; a credible account from a Mormon missionary 
who had recanted without bitterness) ; W. A. Linn, The Story 
of the Mormons (N.Y., 1902; the only critical history of the 
Mormons, but having a strong Gentile bias) ; T. J. Dimsdale, The 
Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky Moun- 
tains (2d ed., Virginia City, 1882; a good description of the 
social order of the mining camp). 



INDEX 



Acton, Minnesota, Sioux massacre 

at, 235. 
Alder Gulch mines, Idaho, 168. 
Anthony, Major Scott J., 259. 
Apache Indians, 247, 267, 268, 292, 

312; treaty of 1853 with, 124; 

troubles with, in Arizona, 162- 

163; last struggles of, against 

whites, 368-369. 
Arapaho Indians, 247, 248, 252, 

256 ff., 263, 267, 292; Medicine 

Lodge treaty with, 292-293; 

issue of arms to, 312-313; join 

in war of 1868, 313-318 ; Custer's 

defeat of, 317-318. 
Arapahoe, county of, 141. 
Arickara Indians, treaties of 1851 

with, 123-124. 
Arizona, beginnings of, 158 ff. ; 

erection of territory of, 162. 
Arkansas, boundaries of, 28-29; 

admission as a state, 40. 
Army, question of control of Ind- 
ian affairs by, 324-344. 
Assiniboin Indians, treaties of 

1851 with, 123-124. 
Atchison, Senator, 129, 
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa F6 

Railway, 347, 384. 
Atlantic and Pacific Railway, 375, 

376, 377 ; becomes the St. Louis 

and San Francisco, 378. 
Augur, General C. C, 292, 295, 

359. 
Aiu-aria settlement, Colorado, 142. 

Bannack City, mining centre, 168. 

Bannock Indians, 295. 

Beadle, John H,, on western rail- 
ways and their builders, 332-333, 
335. 



Bear Flag Republic, the, 105. 

Becknell, WiUiam, 56. 

Beckwith, Lieut. E. G., Pacific 

railway survey by, 203-206. 
Bell, English traveller, on railway 

building in the West, 329-331. 
Benton, Thomas Hart, 58 ; interest 

of, in railways, 193-194. 
Bent's Fort, 65, 66. 
Billings, Frederick, 382. 
Blackfoot Indians, 264. 
Black Hawk, Colorado, village of, 

145. 
Black Hawk, Indian chief, 17. 
Black Hawk War, 21, 25-26, 37. 
Black Hills, discovery of gold in, 

359; troubles with Indians 

resulting from discovery, 361 S. 
Black Kettle, Indian chief, 255- 

261 ; leads war party in 1868, 

313 ; death of, 317. 
Blind pool, Villard's, 383. 
Bois6 mines, 165. 
Boulder, Colorado, 145. 
Bowles, Samuel, on railway ter- 
minal towns, 332, 333. 
Box family outrage, 307. 
Bridge across the Mississippi, the 

first, 210. 
Bridget, "Jim," 274. 
Brown, John, murder of Kansans 

by, 134. 
Brul6 Sioux Indians, 264, 266. 
Bull Bear, Indian chief, 309. 
Bureau of Indian Affairs, 31, 123, 

341 ff. 
Burlington, capital of Iowa terri- 

torv, 45 ; description of, in 1840, 

47-48. 
Burnett, governor of California, 

117. 



393 



394 



INDEX 



Bushwhacking in Kansas during 

Civil War, 231. 
Butterfield, John, mail and express 

route of, 177 ff. 
Byers, Denver editor, 144 ; quoted, 

149, 150. 

Caddo Indians, 28. 

California, early American designs 
on, 104-105 ; becomes American 
possession, 105; discovery of 
gold in, and results, 108-113; 
population in 1850, 117; local 
railways constructed in, 219 ; 
Central Pacific Railway in, 220, 
222. 

Camels, experiment with, in Texas, 
176. 

Camp Grant massacre, 162. 

Canals, land grants in aid of, 215, 
217. 

Canby, E. R. S., 228, 233 ; murder 
of, 367. 

Carleton, Colonel J. H,, 160, 233. 

Carlyle, George H., 250-251. 

Carrington, Colonel Henry B., 274- 
275. 

Carson, Kit, 285. 

Carson City, 157-158. 

Carson County, 157. 

Cass, Lewis, 21, 23. 

Census of Indians, in 1880, 351. 

Central City, Colorado, 145. 

Central Overland, California, and 
Pike's Peak Express, 186. 

Central Pacific of California Rail- 
way, 220, 222; description of 
construction of, 325-335. 

Cherokee Indians, 28-29. 

Cherokee Neutral Strip, 29. 

Cheyenne, founding of, 301 ; con- 
sequence of, as a railway junc- 
tion, 334. 

Cheyenne Indians, massacre of, at 
Sand Creek, 260-261 ; assigned 
lands in Indian Territory, 263 ; 
Medicine Lodge treaty with, 292- 
293; issue of arms to, 312-313; 
begin war against whites in 



1868, 313; Custer's defeat of, 

317-318. 
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy 

Railway, 383. 
Chickasaw Indians, 28-29. 
Chief Joseph, leader of Nez Perc6 

Indians, 363-365 • military skill 

shown by, in retreat of Nez 

Percys, 366-367. 
Chief Lawyer, 363-364. 
Chinese labor for railway building, 

326-327. 
Chippewa Indians, 26-27. 
Chittenden, Hiram Martin, 70-71, 

93. 
Chivington, J. M., 229-230, 257; 

massacre of Indians at Sand 

Creek by, 260-261. 
Civil War, the West during the, 

225 ff. 
Claims associations, 47. 
Clark, Governor, 20, 21, 25. 
Clemens, S. L., quoted, 186-187. 
Cody, William F., 184. 
Colley, Major, Indian agent, 255, 

258, 262. 
Colorado, first settlements in, 142- 

145; movement for separate 

government for, 146 ff . ; Senate 

bill for erection of territory of, 

151, 154; boundaries of, 154; 

admission of, and first governor, 

154-155; during the Civil War, 

228-230. 
Colorado-Idaho plan, 151. 
Comanche Indians, 28, 124, 252, 

253, 263, 267, 268, 292. 
Comstock lode, the, 157. i 

Conestoga wagons, 41, 64. ' 

Connor, General Patrick E., 274, 
Cooke, Jay, railway promotion and 

later failure of, 376-377. 
Cooper, Colonel, 57. 
Council Bluffs, importance of, as 

a railway terminus, 334. 
Council Grove, rendezvous of Santa 

F6 traders, 59, 63-64. 
Credit Mobilier, the, 335. 
Creek Indians, 28-29. 



INDEX 



395 



Crocker, Charles, 220; activity of, 
as a railway builder, 327. 

Crook, General George, 368-369. 

Crow Indians, treaties of 1851 with, 
123-124. 

Culbertson, Alexander, 200. 

Cumberland Road, 41, 215, 325. 

Custer, General, 304, 306, 307 ff., 
310, 316, 359 ; commands in 
attack on Cheyenne, 316-318; 
romantic character of, and death 
in Sioux war, 362. 

Dakota, erection and growth of 
territory of, 166-167 ; Idaho 
created from a part of, 167. 

Dawes bill of 1887, for division of 
lands among Indians, 354-355 ; 
effect of, on Indian reserves, 
356. 

Delaware Indians, settlement of, 
in the West, 24, 127. 

Demoine County created, 42. 

Denver, settlement of, 142; early 
caucuses and conventions at, 
147-149. 

Denver and Rio Grande Railway, 
383-384. 

Desert, tradition of a great Ameri- 
can, 11-13; disappearance of 
tradition, 119; Kansas formed 
out of a portion of, 137; final 
conquest by railways of region 
known as, 384-386. 

Digger Indians, 203-204. 

Dillon, President, 336. 

Dodge, Henry, 35-36, 37-38, 44, 
328-329. 

Dole, W. P., Indian Commissioner, 
239. 

Donnelly, Ignatius, 237. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 128, 213-214. 

Downing, Major Jacob, 252, 260. 

Dubuque, lead mines at, 34; as a 
mining camp, 42. 

Dubuque County created, 42. 

Education of Indians, 351-352. 
Emigrant Aid Society, 130. 



Emory, Lieut.-Col., survey by, 
208. 

Erie Canal, 10, 21, 24, 38, 325. 

Evans, Governor, war against Ind- 
ians conducted by, 253 ff. ; 
quoted, 269. 

Ewbank Station massacre, 250. 

Fairs, agricultural, for Indians, 
352-353. 

Falls line, 5. 

Far West, Mormon headquarters 
at, 90. 

Fetterman, Captain W. J., 274, 
277-278, 279; slaughter of, by 
Indians, 280-281. 

Fiske, Captain James L., 188. 

Fitzpatrick, Indian agent, 122-124. 

Fort Armstrong, purchase at, of 
Indian lands, 26. 

Fort Benton, 163, 164. 

Fort Bridger, 301. 

Fort C. F. Smith, 275-277. 

Fort Hall, 74. 

Fort Kearney, 78. 

Fort Laramie, 78, 121 ; treaties 
with Indians signed at, in 1851, 
123-124; conference of Peace 
Commission with Indians held at 
(1867), 291. 

Fort Larned, conference with Ind- 
ians at, 308. 

Fort Leavenworth, 24, 59. 

Fort Philip Kearney, Indian fight 
at (1866), 274-275; extermina- 
tion of Fetterman 's party at, 
280-282. 

Fort Pierre, 267. 

Fort Ridgelv, Sioux attack on, 
235-236. 

Fort Snelling, 33-34, 48. 

Fort Su'ly conference, 271-272, 
273. 

Fort Whipple, 162. 

Fort Winnebago, 35. 

Fort Wise, treaty with Indians 
signed at, 249. 

Forty-niners, 109-118. 

Fox Indians, 21, 25, 26, 127. 



396 



INDEX 



Flandrau, Judge Charles E., 236- 
237. 

Franklin, town of, 63. 

Freighting on the plains, 174 ff, 

Fremont, John C, 58; explora- 
tions of, beyond the Rockies, 
73-75, 195; senator from Cali- 
fornia, 117. 

Fur traders, pioneer western, 70- 
71. 

Galbraith, Thomas J., Indian agent, 
238. 

Geary, John W., 135. 

Georgetown, Colorado, 145. 

Geronimo, Indian chief, 369. 

Gilpin, William, first governor of 
Colorado Territory, 155 ; quoted, 
225; responsibility assumed by, 
during the Civil War, 228-229. 

Gold, discovery of, in California, 
108-113; in Pike's Peak region, 
141-142; in the Black Hills, 
359-361. 

Grattan, Lieutenant, 265. 

Great American desert. See Des- 
ert. 

Great Salt Lake. See Salt Lake. 

Great Salt Lake Valley Carrying 
Company, 176. 

Greeley, Horace, western adven- 
tures of, 145, 179, 182. 

Gregg, Josiah, 61-62. 

Grosventre Indians, treaties of 
1851 with, 123-124. 

Guerrilla conflicts during the Civil 
War, 230-233. 

Gunnison, Captain J. W., 204-205. 

Hancock, General W. S., 306-311. 
Hand-cart incident in Mormon 

emigration, 100-101. 
Harney, General, 266. 
Harte, Bret, verses by, 338. 
Hayt, E. A., Indian Commissioner, 

350. 
Hazen, General W. B., 320-321. 
Helena, growth of city of, 169. 
Highland settlement, Colorado, 142. 



Holladay, Ben, 186-190, 284; 

losses from Indians by, 250. 
Hopkins, Mark, 220. 
Howard, General O. O., 365-366. 
Hungate family, murder of, by 

Indians, 253. 
Hunkpapa Indians, 264. 
Hunter, General, in charge of 

Department of Kansas during 

Qvil War, 230-231. 
Htmtington, Collis P., 220. 

Idaho, proposed name for Colorado, 
151, 154; establishment of ter- 
ritory of, 166-167. 

Idaho Springs, settlement of, 145. 

Illinois, opening of, to whites, 
21. 

Illinois Central Railroad, 210, 216- 
218. 

Independence, town of, 63; out- 
fitting post of traders, 71 ; Mor- 
mons at, 89-90. 

Indian agents, position of, in re- 
gard to Indian affairs, 304-305; 
question regarding, as opposed to 
military control of Indians, 342- 
343. 

Indian Biu-eau, creation of, 31 ; 
transference from War Depart- 
ment to the Interior, 123; his- 
tory of the, 341 ff. 

Indian Commissioners, Board of, 
created in 1869, 345. 

Indian Intercoiu'se Act, 31. 

Indian Territory, position of Ind- 
ians in, during the Civil War, 
240-241 ; breaking up of, fol- 
lowing allotment of lands to 
individual Indians, 357. 

Indians, numbers of, in United 
States, 14; governmental policy 
regarding, 16 ff . ; Monroe's 
poUcy of removal of, to western 
lands, 18-19; treaties of 1825 
with, 19-20; allotment of terri- 
tory among, on western frontier, 
20-30; troubles vnth, resulting 
from Oregon, California, and 



INDEX 



397 



Mormon emigrations, 119-123 ; 
fresh treaties with at Upper 
Platte agency in 1851, 123-124; 
further cession of lands in Ind- 
ian Country by, in 1854, 127; 
treatment of, by Arizona settlers, 
162-163; danger to overland 
mail and express business from, 
187-188, 250; Digger Indians, 
203-204 ; the Sioux war in Min- 
nesota, 234 ff. ; effect of the Civil 
War on, 240-242; causes of 
restlessness of, during Civil War, 
234 ff . ; antagonism of, aroused 
by advance westward of whites, 
244-252; conditions leading to 
Sioux war, 264 ff. ; war with 
plains Sioux (1866), 273-283; 
the discussion as to proper 
treatment of, 284-288; appoint- 
ment of Peace Commissioner of 
1867 to end Cheyenne and Sioux 
troubles, 289-290 ; Medicine 
Lodge treaties concluded with, 
292-293; report and recom- 
mendations of Peace Commis- 
sion, 296-298; interval of peace 
with, 302-303 ; continued 

troubles with, and causes, 304 ff. ; 
war begun by Arapahoes and 
Cheyenne in 1868, 313; war of 
1868, 313-318; President Grant 
appoints board of civilian Indian 
conunissioners, 323, 341 ff. ; rail- 
way builders' troubles with, 
328-329 ; question of civilian 
or military control of, 342-344; 
Board of Commissioners, ap- 
pointed for (1869), 345; Con- 
gress decides to make no more 
treaties with, 348; mistaken 
policy of treaties, 348-349 ; cen- 
sus of, in 1880, 351 ; agricultural 
fairs for, 352-353; individual 
ownership of land by, 354-357; 
effect of allotment of lands 
among, on Indian reserves, 356- 
357; end of Monroe's policy, 
357; last struggles of the Sioux, 



Nez Percys, and Apaches, 361- 
371. 

Inkpaduta's massacre, 51. 

Inman, Colonel Henry, quoted, 
285. 

Iowa, Indian lands out of which 
formed, 26; territory of, or- 
ganized, 45. 

Iowa Indians, 127. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, work by, 
344. 

Jefferson, early name of state of 
Colorado, 147, 149, 151, 153, 155. 

Johnston, Albert Sidney, com- 
mands army against Mormons, 
102; escapes to the South, on 
opening of the Civil War, 226- 
227. 

Jones and Russell, firm of, 181. 

Judah, Theodore D., 219, 220, 326. 

Julesburg, station on overland 
mail route, 182, 331. 

Kanesville, Iowa, founding of, 95. 

Kansa Indians, 19, 20, 24. 

Kansas, reasons for settlement of, 
124-125 ; creation of territory 
of, 129; the slavery struggle in, 
129-131 ; squatters on Indian 
lands in, 131-132; further con- 
tests between abolition and pro- 
slave parties, 132-136 ; admis- 
sion to the union in 1861, 136; 
boundaries of, 138; during the 
Civil War, 230-233. 

Kansas-Nebraska bill, 128-129. 

Kansas Pacific Railwaj^ 340. 

Kaskaskia Indians, 30, 127. 

Kaw Indians. See Kansa Indians. 

Kearny, Stephen W., 65-66, 78. 

Kendall, Superintendent of Indian 
department, quoted, 165. 

Keokuk, Indian chief, 25. 

Kickapoo Indians, 24, 127. 

Kiowa Indians, 252, 253, 263, 267, 
268, 292, 306. 

Kirtland, Ohio, temporary head- 
quarters of Mormons, 88. 



398 



INDEX 



Labor question in railway construc- 
tion, 326-327. 
Lake-to-Gulf railway scheme, 217. 
Land, allotment of, to Indians as 

individuals, 354-357. 
Land grants in aid of railways, 215- 

218, 222, 325, 329, 336, 375. 
Land titles, pioneers' difficulties 

over, 46-47. 
Larimer, William, 147, 152. 
Last Chance Gulch, Idaho, mining 

district, 169. 
Lawrence, Amos A., 130. 
Lawrence, Kansas, settlement of, 

130-131 ; visit of Missouri mob 

to, 134; Quantrill's raid on, 232. 
Lead mines about Dubuque, 34- 

35. 
Leavenworth, J. H., Indian agent, 

306, 308-309. 
Leavenworth and Pike's Peak 

Express Company, 181. 
Leavenworth constitution, 135- 

136. 
Lecompton constitution, 135-136. 
Lewiston, Washington, founding 

of, 164. 
Linn, Senator, 72-73. 
Liquor question in Oregon, 81-82. 
Little Big Horn, battle of the, 

362. 
Little Blue Water, defeat of Brul6 

Sioux at, 266. 
Little Crow, Sioux chief, 235-239. 
Little Raven, Indian chief, 306. 
Long, Major Stephen H., 11. 

McClellan, George B., survey for 
Pacific railway by, 199. 

Madison, Wisconsin, development 
of, 44, 45. 

Mails, carriage of, to frontier points, 
174 ff. 

Manypenny, George W., 126, 266. 

Marsh, O. C, bad treatment of 
Indians revealed by, 360-361. 

Marshall, James W., ^108-109. 

Massachusetts Emigrant Aid So- 
ciety, 130. 



Medicine Lodge Creek, conference 
with Indians at, 292-293. 

Menominee Indians, 27. 

Methodist missionaries to western 
Indians, 72. 

Mexican War, Army of the West 
in the, 65-66. 

Miami Indians, 30, 127. 

Michigan, territory and state of, 
39-40. 

Miles, General Nelson h.., as an 
Indian fighter, 366, 370. 

Milwaukee, founding of, 44. 

Mines, trails leading to, 169-170. 

Miniconjou Indians, 265, 

Mining, lead, 34-35, 42; gold, 
108-113, 141-142, 156-157, 359- 
361 ; silver, 157 ff. 

Mining camps, description of, 170- 
173. 

Minnesota, organization of, as a 
terri orv, 48-49; Sioux war in, 
in 1862", 234 ff. 

Missionaries, pioneer, 72; civili- 
zation and education of Indiana 
by, 345-346. 

Missoula County, Washington Ter- 
ritory, 168. 

Missouri Indians, 127. 

Modoc Indians, last war of the, 
367. 

Modoc Jack, 367. 

Mojave branch of Southern Pacific 
Railway, 381-382. 

Monroe's policy toward Indians, 
18-19 ; end of, 357. 

Montana, creation of territory of, 
169. 

Montana settlement, Colorado, 142. 

Monteith, Indian Agent, 365. 

Mormons, the, 86 ff., 102. 

Mo wry, Sylvester, 159, 161. 

MuUan Road, the, 167, 170. 

Murphy, Thomas, Indian superin- 
tendent, 312. 

Nauvoo, Mormon settlement of, 

91-94. 
Navaho Indians, 243, 368. 



INDEX 



399 



Nebraska, movement for a terri- 
tory of, 125 ; creation of terri- 
tory of, 129 ; boundaries of, 138. 

Neutral Line, the, 21. 

Nevada, beginnings of, 156-158; 
territory of, organized, 158. 

New Mexico, the early trade to, 
53-69; boundaries of, in 1854, 
139 ; during the Civil War, 229- 
230. 

New Ulm, Minnesota, fight with 
Sioux Indians at, 236-237. 

Nez Perc6 Indians, 164, 363-365 ; 
precipitation of war with, in 
1877, 365-366; defeat and dis- 
posal of tribe, 366-367. 

Niles, Hezekiah, 60, 79. 

Noland, Fent, 42-43. 

No Man's Land, 357. 

Northern Pacific Railway, 375, 
376, 377, 382-383. 

Oglala Sioux, 281, 291, 360. 

Oklahoma, 357, 386. 

Omaha, cause of growth of, 334. 

Omaha Indians, 25. 

Oregon, fur traders and early 
pioneers, in, 70-72; emigration 
to, in 1844-1847, 75-76; pro- 
visional government organized 
by settlers in, 79-80; region 
included under name, 83-84; 
territory of, organized (1848), 
85; population in 1850, 117; 
boundaries of, in 1854, 139; 
territory of Washington cut from, 
163 ; railway lines in, 382-383. 

Oregon trail, 70-85 ; course of the, 
78-79; the Mormons on the, 
86 ff. 

Osage Indians, 19, 20. 

Oto Indians, 127. 

Ottawa Indians, 27. 

Overland mail, the, 174 ff. 

Owyhee mining district, 165. 

Paiute Indians, murder of Captain 

Gimnison by, 205. 
Palmer, General William J., 383. 



Panic, of 1837, 43-44; of 1857, 
51-52; of 1873, 377-379. 

Parke, Lieut. J. G., survey for 
Pacific railway by, 207-208. 

Peace Commission of 1867, to con- 
clude Cheyenne and Sioux wars, 
289-290; Medicine Looge trea- 
ties concluded by, 292-293; re- 
port of, quoted, 296-298. 

Pennsylvania Portage Railway, 
325. 

Peoria Indians, 30, 127. 

Piankashaw Indians, 30, 127. 

Pike, Zebulon M., 19, 34, 55. 

Pike's Peak, discovery of gold 
about, 141-142; the rush to, 
142-145 ; reaction from boom, 
145-146 ; origin of Colorado 
Territory in the Pike's Peak 
boom, 146-155. 

"Pike's Peak Guide," the, 144. 

Plum Creek massacre, 250. 

Pony express, 158, 182-185. 

Pope, Captain John, survey by, 
207. 

Popular sovereignty, doctrine of, 
128. 

Poston, Charles D., 159. 

Potawatomi Indians, 26-27. 

Powder River expedition, 273- 
274. 

Powder River war with Indians, 
276-283. 

Powell, Major James, 283. 

Prairie du Chien, treaty made with 
Indians at, 20-21 ; second treaty 
of (1830), 25. 

Prairie schooners, 64. 

Pratt, R. H., education of Indians 
attempted by, 351. 

Price's Missouri expedition, 233. 

Quantrill's raid into Kansas, 231- 

232. 
Quapaw Indians, 29. 

Railways, early craze for building, 
40; advance of, in the fifties, 
51; first thoughts about a 



400 



INDEX 



Pacific road, 192 ff. ; surveys for [ 
Pacific, 192 ff., 197-203 ; bearing 
of slavery question on trans- 
continental, 211-214; Senator 
Douglas's bill, 213-214; land 
grants in aid of, 215-218, 222, 
325, 329, 336, 375 ; Indian hos- 
tilities caused by advance of the, 
283; description of construction 
of Central Pacific and Union 
Pacific roads, 325-335 ; scandals 
connected with building of roads, 
335; description of formal junc- 
tion of Central Pacific and Union 
Pacific, 336-337 ; effect of roads 
in bringing peace upon the plains, 
347 ; charter acts of the Northern 
Pacific, Atlantic and Pacific, 
Texas Pacific, and Southern 
Pacific, 375 ; slow development 
of the later Pacific roads, 376 ; 
the five new continental routes 
and their connections, 379-382; 
Northern Pacific, 382-383; Chi- 
cago, BurUngton, and Quincy, 
383; Denver and Rio Grande, 
383-384; disappearance of fron- 
tier through extension of lines 
of, and conquest of Great Ameri- 
can Desert, 384-386. 

Ration system, pauperization of 
Indians by, 352. 

Real estate speculation along west- 
ern railways, 333-334. 

Red Cloud, Indian chief, 274, 281, 
283, 291-292, 294, 360. 

Reeder, Andrew H., governor of 
Kansas Territory, 131-133. 

RepoH on the Condition of the 
Indian Tribes, 286-287. 

Rhodes, James Ford, cited, 128. 

Riggs, Rev. S. R., 239. 

Riley, Major, 59-60. 

Rio Grande, struggle for the, in 
Civil War, 228-230. 

Robinson, Dr. Charles, 130; elected 
governor of Kansas, 133. 

Rocky Mountain News, the, 144, 
150. 



Roman Nose, Indian chief, 309. 
Ross, John, Cherokee chief, 241. 
Russell, WilUam H., 181, 182, 

185. 
Russell, Majors, and Waddell, firm 

of, 181. 

St. Charles settlement, Colorado, 
142; merged into Denver, 146. 

St. Paul, Sioux Indian reserve at, 
19 ; early fort near site of, 33- 
34; first settlement at, 49. 

Saline River raid by Indians, 313, 
314. 

Salt Lake, Fremont's visit to, 74; 
settlement of Mormons at, 96; 
population of, in 1850, 117-118. 

Sand Creek, massacre of Cheyenne 
Indians at, 260-261. 

Sans Arcs Indians, 264. 

Santa Fe, trade with, 53—69. 

Santa F6 trail, Indians along the, 
20; beginnings of the (1822), 
56-58; course of the, 64-65. 

Satanta, Kiowa Indian chief, 306. 

Sauk Indians, 21, 25, 26, 127. | 

Saxton, Lieutenant, 199, 201. 

Scandals, railway-building, 335. 

Scar-faced Charley, Modoc Indian 
leader, 367. 

Schofield, General John M., 232. 

Schools for Indians, 351-352. 

Schurz, Carl, policy of, toward 
Indians, 350. 

Seminole Indians, 28-29. 

Seneca Indians, 29. 

Shannon, Wilson, governor of 
Kansas, 133, 134. 

Shawnee Indians, 23-24, 127. 

Sheridan, General, in command 
against Indians, 310-323 ; quoted, 
384-385. 

Sherman, John, quoted on Indian 
matters, 285, 289. 

Sherman, W. T., quoted, 143-144, 
298 ; instructions issued to Sheri- 
dan by, in Indian war of 1868, 
316. 

Shoshoni Indians, 123-124, 295. 



INDEX 



401 



Sibley, General H. H., 228, 237- 
238, 362. 

Silver mining, 157 ff. 

Sioux Indians, treaty of 1825 affect- 
ing the, 21 ; location of, in 1837, 
27; surrender of lands in Min- 
nesota by, 49 ; treaties of 1851 
with, 123-124; war with, in 
Minnesota, in 1862, 234 ff . ; 
trial and punishment of, for 
Minnesota outrages, 239-240 ; 
bands composing the plains 
Sioux, 264-265; war with the 
plains Sioux in 1866, 264-283; 
lands assigned to, by Fort 
Laramie treaty of 1868, 294; 
sources of irritation between 
white settlers and, in 1870, 359 ; 
disturbance of, by discovery of 
gold in the Black Hills, 359, 361 ; 
war with, in 1876, 362-363; 
crushing of, by United States 
forces, 363. 

Sitting Bull, 361 ; career of, as 
leader of insurgent Sioux, 362- 
363 ; settles in Canada, 363 ; 
returns to United States, 369; 
death of, 370. 

Slade, Jack, 182. 

Slavery question, in territories, 
128 ff. ; bearing of, on trans- 
continental railway question, 
211-214. 

Slough, Colonel John P., 229-230. 

Smith, Joseph, 87, 90-93. 

Smohalla, medicine-man, 365. 

Sod breaking, Iowa, 46. 

Solomon River raid, 313, 314. 

Southern Pacific Railway, 375- 
376, 379, 381. 

South Pass, the gateway to Ore- 
gon, 70. 

Southport, founding of, 44. 

Spirit Lake massacre, 51. 

Stanford, Leland, 220, 336. 

Stansbury, Lieutenant, survey by, 
112, 113, 203; quoted, 114-115. 

Steamboats as factors in emigra- 
tion, 40-41, 49. 

2d 



Steele, Robert W., governor of 
Jefferson Territory (Colorado), 
150, 152, 153, 155. 

Stevens, Isaac I., 197-203. 

Stuart, Granville and James, 168. 

Subsidies to railways, 222, 325, 329, 

375. See Land grants. 
Sully, General Alfred, 268, 319. 
Surveys for Pacific railway, 192 ff. 
Sutter, John A., 104, 107-109. 
Sweetwater mines, 301. 

Telegraph system, inauguration of 
transcontinental, 185 ; freedom 
of, from Indian interference, 
283. 

Ten Eyck, Captain, 280. 

Texas, railway building in, 375- 

376, 377 ff. 

Texas Pacific Railway, 375-376, 

378, 379. 
Thayer, Eli, 129-130. 
Tippecanoe, battle of, 17. 
Topeka constitution, 133. 
Traders, wrongs done to Indians by, 

234-235. 
Treaties with Indians, 19-20, 123- 

124, 292-293; fallacy of, 348- 

349. See Indians. 
Tucson, 159, 160. 

Union Pacific Railway, the, 211 ff. ; 
reason for name, 221 ; incor- 
poration of company, 221 ; route 
of, 221-222; land grants in 
aid of, 222 (see Land grants) ; 
financing of project, 222-223; 
progress in construction of, 298- 
299, 301 ; description of con- 
struction of, 325-335. 

Utah, territory of, organized, 101— 
102 ; boundaries of, 139 ; parti- 
tion of Nevada from, 157 ff. ; 
derivation of name from Ute 
Indians, 295. 

Victorio, Indian chief, 369. 
Vigilance committees in mining 
camps, 172. 



402 



INDEX 



Villard, Henry, 145, 182, 186, 382- 

383. 
Vinita, terminus of Atlantic and 

Pacific road, 377. 
Virginia Qty, 158, 168-169. 

Wagons, Conestoga, 41, 64; over- 
land mail coaches, 178-179; 
numbers employed in overland 
freight business, 190. 

Wakarusa War, 133-134. 

Walker, General Francis A., 285, 
349. 

Walker, Robert J., 135. 

Washington, creation of territory 
of, 163; mining in, 164-166; 
a part of Idaho formed from, 
166-167. 

Washita, battle of the, 317-318. 

Wayne, Anthony, 8, 17. 

Wea Indians, 30, 127. 

Wells, Fargo, and Company, 186, 
190. 

Whipple, Lieut. A. W., survey for 
Pacific railway by, 206-207. 

White, Dr. EUjah, 75-76. 



White Antelope, Indian chief, 256, 
260, 313. 

Whitman, Marcus, 72, 77, 80-81. 

Whitney, Asa, 193, 212. 

Willamette provisional govern- 
ment, 79-80. 

Williams, Beverly D., 149. 

Williamson, Lieut. R. S., svirvey 
by, 208. 

Wilson, Hill P., Indian trader, 314. 

Winnebago Indians, 26. 

Wisconsin, opening of, to whites, 
21 ; territory of, organized, 44. 

Wounded Knee, Indian fight at, 
370. 

Wyeth, Nathaniel J., 72. 

Wynkoop, E. W., 255-259, 306, 
310, 312-313. 

Wyoming, territory of, 299, 302. 

Yankton Sioux, the, 25, 166, 264. 
Yerba Buena, village of, later San 

Francisco, 105. 
Young, Brigham, 93-94, 96, 97 ff., 

206; made governor of Utah 

Territory, 101-102. 



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